SOLID, in philosophy, a body whose parts are so firmly connected together, as not to give way or slip from each other upon the smallest impression; in which sense solid stands opposed to fluid.
Geometricians define a solid to be the third species of magnitude, or that which has three dimensions, viz. length, breadth, and thickness or depth.
Solids are commonly divided into regular and irregular. The regular solids are those terminated by regular and equal planes, and are only five in number, viz. the tetrahedron, which consists of four equal triangles; the cube, or hexahedron, of six equal squares; the octahedron, of eight equal triangles; the dodecahedron, of twelve; and the icosahedron, of twenty equal triangles.
The irregular solids are almost infinite, comprehending all such as do not come under the definition of regular solids; as the sphere, cylinder, cone, parallelogram, prism, parallelopiped, &c.