precession

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun the motion of a spinning body (as a top) in which it wobbles so that the axis of rotation sweeps out a cone
noun the act of preceding in time or order or rank (as in a ceremony)

From Middle English precessioun, precession, from Medieval Latin prēcessiōn-, prēcessio, from Latin praecēdō.

One fine morning in the middle of the Precession of the Equinoxes this ‘satiable Elephant’s Child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. — Just so stories, Rudyard Kipling
It had something to do with Einstein, and something to do with terrestrial magnetism, and the variations of the south magnetic pole, and the reason therefore, and something to do with parallaxes and the precession of the equinoxes and other things, this search for the pole's exact location. — Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1930, Unknown
He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly humorous process as treated by him. — The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle

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