Phrase guide

fiber bundle

noun · 3 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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1

noun

Meaning 1

Synonym of vascular bundle.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Topics: biology, botany, natural-sciences

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: vascular bundle

Antonyms: none provided

2

noun

Meaning 2

An abstract object in topology where copies of one object are "attached" to every point of another, as hairs or fibers are attached to a hairbrush. Formally, a topological space E (called the total space), together with a topological space B (called the base space), a topological space F (called the fiber), and surjective map π from E to B (called the projection or submersion), such that every point of B has a neighborhood U with π−1(U) homeomorphic to the product space U × F (that is, E looks locally the same as the product space B × F, although its global structure may be quite different).

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: US

Topics: category-theory, computing, engineering, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, sciences, topology

Examples

  • A Möbius strip is a fiber bundle which looks locally (i.e., over a connected proper subset of its base space) like the corresponding part of a cylinder S1#92;times#91;0,1#93; (a Möbius strip and a cylinder have isomorphic base spaces). A Klein bottle is a fiber bundle which looks locally like the corresponding part of a torus S1#92;timesS1 (again they could be thought of as sharing the same base space S1; cutting out even a single point of that base space makes the cut Klein bottle isomorphic to the cut torus).
  • In general, a fiber bundle consists of a set of mutually disjoint fibers “over” a base space, which indexes the fibers; there is a copy of some fiber on top of, or projecting (“canonically”) onto each point of the base space.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

3

noun

Meaning 3

a bundle of fibers (especially nerve fibers)

Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: fibre bundle, fascicle, fasciculus

Antonyms: none provided

Broader terms: nervous tissue, nerve tissue

Narrower terms: fornix, trigonum cerebrale, nerve, nervus

History

Etymology

(mathematics): Coined as fibre bundle by American mathematician Norman Steenrod in 1951, The Topology of Fibre Bundles. The related usages fiber and fiber space probably derive (as calques respectively of German Faser and gefaserter Räume) from 1933, Herbert Seifert, “Topologie dreidimensionaler gefaserter Räume,” Acta Mathematica, 60, (1933), 147-238.

Across languages

Translations

5 source translations are retained for this English entry.

  • Catalan: fibrat — topological space
  • Finnish: kuitukimppu — topological space
  • German: Faserbündel — topological space
  • Korean: 올다발 (oldabal) — topological space
  • Portuguese: fibrado — topological space