saccade

See also: saccadé

English

WOTD – 16 July 2011

Etymology

Borrowed from French saccade.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /səˈkɑːd/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑːd

Noun

saccade (plural saccades)

2. (ophthalmology, technology, science of reading) A rapid movement of the eye (either voluntary or involuntary) from one focus to another. (Often described as a jerky movement, but this word denotes all such quick eye movements, which happen continually, not just exaggerated or weird ones, and not nystagmus.)

   Coordinate terms: fixation (eye pause), nystagmus (pathologic eye movement); glancing

   • 1993, Will Self, My Idea of Fun:

     He added the bill with a single saccade of his pulsing eyes.

   • 2000 November 21, Tim Radford, The Guardian:

     Then 130 milliseconds or thousandths of a second later, each made a "saccade" - an extremely fast eye movement - to roughly where the ball was likely to bounce.

   • 2019, Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me, Jonathan Cape, page 23:

     He paused, looking at me intently, his black-flecked eyes scanning my face in quick saccades.

3. The act of checking a horse quickly with a single strong pull of the reins.
4. (music) The sounding of two violin strings together by using a sudden strong pressure of the bow.
5. (rare) Any sudden jerking movement.

Derived terms

• antisaccade
• desaccade
• intersaccade
• macrosaccade
• microsaccade
• presaccade
• prosaccade
• saccadic
• saccadically
• saccadization
• saccadometer
• saccadometric
• saccadometry

Translations

sudden jerk

• Finnish: nykäys (fi), nykäisy (fi)
• French: saccade (fr) f
• Japanese: 突然のジャーク (totsuzen no jāku)
• Portuguese: tranco (pt) m
• Russian: внеза́пный рыво́к m (vnezápnyj ryvók)

rapid jerky movement of the eye

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 掃視 / 扫视 (zh) (sǎoshì)

• Czech: sakáda f
• Dutch: saccade f
• Finnish: sakkadi
• French: saccade (fr) f
• German: Sakkade f
• Greek: μεταπήδηση (el) f (metapídisi)
• Hungarian: szakkád
• Italian: saccade f
• Portuguese: movimento sacádico m
• Russian: сакка́да (ru) f (sakkáda), бы́строе скачкообра́зное движе́ние глаз n (býstroje skačkoobráznoje dvižénije glaz)
• Spanish: sacada (es) f, movimiento sacádico / ocular m

act of checking a horse with a single pull of the reins

• Finnish: vetäisy (fi)
• French: saccade (fr) f
• Portuguese: puxão (pt) m

music: sounding of two violin strings together

• Finnish: saccadé
• Russian: сакка́да (ru) f (sakkáda)

Verb

saccade (third-person singular simple present saccades, present participle saccading, simple past and past participle saccaded)

1. (of the eye, intransitive) To make a rapid jerking movement to focus elsewhere.

See also

• eyetracking
• scanpath

Anagrams

• Cascade, cascade

French

Etymology

From saquer or its Spanish cognate sacar.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sa.kad/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

Noun

saccade f (plural saccades)

1. a jerk (jerking movement)
2. a rapid jerky movement of the eye (voluntary or involuntary) from one focus to another
3. the act of checking a horse quickly with a single strong pull of the reins

Derived terms

• ronfler par saccades

Verb

saccade

1. inflection of saccader:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

• “saccade”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Anagrams

• accédas, cascade, cascadé