Word origin · etymology
Latin through French.
Latin orbis means circle, disk, or sphere. Astrology extended the surrounding-circle idea to a permitted range around exact contact.
How we know · epistemology
Practitioner tolerance
An orb decides which near-matches count under a technique. Widening it changes the result set, so the tolerance must be declared before comparison; it is not a measured radius of influence.
Connected concepts
Mentioned in 10 other entries
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