Precession
WordNet
noun
(1) The act of preceding in time or order or rank (as in a ceremony)
(2) The motion of a spinning body (as a top) in which it wobbles so that the axis of rotation sweeps out a cone
WiktionaryText
Noun
- precedence
- But as it will not do to talk entirely at random, as Montaigne does, and Ralph Waldo Emerson tries to do, we must take up some little thread or threads. and string our thoughts thereupon, keeping up also a relation among them of precession and succession.
- The wobbling motion of the axis of a spinning body when there is an external force acting on the axis.
- The slow gyration of the earth’s axis around the pole of the ecliptic, caused mainly by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon.