Definition of "interpolation"

interpolation

/ɪnˌtɜː(ɹ)pəˈleɪʃən/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural interpolations
1. (music) An abrupt change in elements, with continuation of the first idea.
2. (mathematics, sciences) The process of estimating the value of a function at a point from its values at nearby points.
3. (computing) The process of including and processing externally-fetched data in a document or program; see interpolate.
4. (editing, content analysis) That which is introduced or inserted; in contexts of content analysis of centuries-old texts, especially something foreign or spurious.
  Quotations
  Bentley wrote a letter […] upon the scriptural glosses in our present copies of Hesychius, which he considered interpolations from a later hand.
  1830, Thomas De Quincey, Life of Richard Bentley
  We, who are born into the world's artificial system, can never adequately know how little in our present state and circumstances is natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man.
  1843, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The New Adam and Eve”, in Mosses from an Old Manse. […], part II, New York, N.Y.: Wiley and Putnam, published 1846, page 1
5. (music) The use of a melody from a previously recorded song, but recreated rather than sampled from that recording.
  Quotations
  The melody itself is an interpolation of “The Streets of Cairo,” an Orientalist Tin Pan Alley song originally published in 1895.
  2015, Loren Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs, page 147