a. (sb.) [ad. Gr. κῑνητικός moving: see -IC.]
1. Producing or causing motion. rare–0.
1855. Mayne, Expos. Lex., Kinetic … (Physiol.), exciting to move, or to act.
2. Of, pertaining or relating to, motion; due to or resulting from motion.
Kinetic energy: see ENERGY 6. Kinetic theory of heat, of gases: the theory that heat, or the gaseous state, is due to motion of the particles of matter.
1864. Reader, 2 April, 429/3. Till and about the year 1780 … the weightiest authorities inclined towards the kinetic theory of heat.
1866. Lond. Rev., 2 June, 615/2. Correct principles of kinetic science.
1870. P. G. Tait, in Nature, 29 Dec., 163/2. The grand modern ideas of Potential and Kinetic Energy cannot be too soon presented to the student.
1871. Sir W. Thomson, in Daily News, 3 Aug., 6/1. The kinetic theory of gases, shadowed forth by Lucretius, definitely stated by Daniel Bernoulli, largely developed by Herapath, made a reality by Joule, and worked out to its present advanced state by Clausius and Maxwell.
1879. Thomson & Tait, Nat. Phil., I. I. § 357. If, from any one configuration, two courses differing infinitely little from one another have again a configuration in common, this second configuration will be called a kinetic focus relatively to the first: or … these two configurations will be called conjugate kinetic foci.
1881. Stevenson, Virg. Puerisque (ed. 8), 111. I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability.
B. sb. = KINETICS.
1873. Clifford, Syllabus Lect., in Math. Papers (1882), 516. It [Dynamic is divided into two parts; Static … and Kinetic.… Properly speaking, Static is a particular case of Kinetic which it is convenient to consider separately.
