aspect ratio

[ as-pekt rey-shoh, rey--shee-oh ]

noun

1. Aeronautics. the ratio of the span of an airfoil to its mean chord.
2. Digital Technology, Television. the ratio of the width of an image to its height, usually a standard ratio such as 16 to 9 or 4 to 3.
3. Naval Architecture. the ratio of the height of a rudder to its fore-and-aft length.
4. Rocketry.
   1. Also called fineness ratio, the ratio of the mean diameter of the body of a rocket or missile to its length.
   2. the ratio of the length of the combustion chamber of a rocket motor to its diameter.

aspect ratio

noun

1. the ratio of width to height of the picture on a television or cinema screen
2. aeronautics the ratio of the span of a wing to its mean chord

Word History and Origins

Origin of aspect ratio¹

First recorded in 1905–10

Example Sentences

These are flashbacks lifted straight from the original telenovela, with Orozco’s youthful voice guiding us through the shift in aspect ratios that bridge the past and the present.

From Los Angeles Times

Since Cootie is so tall, everybody was like, “We should not do that wide aspect ratio.”

From Los Angeles Times

A wide aspect ratio and long lenses create emptiness around Monk, and then as scenes progress, the camera moves to “pan in all the chaos happening around him.”

From Los Angeles Times

"We found a way to synthesize low defect density, high quality, single phase cubic gallium nitride by using an aspect ratio phase trapping technique that the Bayram group has invented," explains Lee.

From Science Daily

“We started talking about lensing right away, theorizing about the format and the aspect ratio.”

From Los Angeles Times