This lesson will help you get a good grasp of English words related to quadrilateral shapes, making learning both English and math more enjoyable. Knowing these shapes can make understanding directions and designs easier.
List of Quadrilateral Shapes
Square
The most basic quadrilateral shape, with 4 sides, each one of the same length. All of the sides meet up to create perfect 90-degree angles. It is the most uniform of all of the shapes.
Rectangle
Basically, a long square. Two of its sides are shorter but the same length, the other two sides are longer but equal in length to each other. A rectangle is a quadrilateral with four right angles and opposite sides that are equal and parallel.
Rhombus
This is where things get a little more tricky. The rhombus looks like a slanted square, where all of the sides are of the same length, but none of them meet to create 90-degree angles. Instead, the shape comes off at a slant, making it so that the corners are different in their degrees (which can vary based on the size of the slant).
Parallelogram
Following suit with the rhombus, the best way to describe a parallelogram is as a slanted rectangle. Just like the rectangle, the sides parallel to each other are of the same length (but two of them will be much longer than the others). The opposite angles created by the meeting of the sides are also matching, but the parallelogram comes off at a slant, creating two different angles of varying degrees.
Trapezoid/Trapezium
In American English, a trapezoid has one pair of parallel sides, while in British English this shape is called a trapezium. In British English, a trapezoid usually refers to a quadrilateral with no parallel sides.
What are Quadrilateral Shapes?
A quadrilateral shape is any shape that has exactly 4 sides to it to make it. The sides can be varying in length, but they have to be straight and they have to meet at 4 corners to create a valid quadrilateral shape. There are plenty of shapes out there that meet this requirement and are therefore known as a quadrilateral.
Some of the most well-known shapes are quadrilateral. The easiest shapes to remember tend to have 4 sides as it’s the number of sides that most agree with our memories. Just look at the square. It’s perhaps the most well-known shape to date and it has 4 sides. Then there’s the rectangle too. 4 sides again, but it shows you that not all the sides need to be of the same length to create the quadrilateral effect.