(Note: this does not include the many, many characters from non-western European languages – otherwise it would be 100,000s of codes long.)īelow is a nice ASCII-formatted table of the most commonly-used symbols and characters. These Alt codes are also helpful if you have a keyboard with a stuck or missing key.īelow I will break down the entire list of alt keys by category. You can type a lot of characters that may not have a corresponding key on your keyboard – such as European language alphabetic characters, ASCII symbols, and even Chinese characters (also known as Hanzi, Kanji, or Hanja). Tangent 5.In Windows, you can type any character you want by holding down the ALT key, typing a sequence of numbers, then releasing the ALT key. Greek word dia (which means across) and metron (which means measure).ĪNSWERS 1. Latin word Tangere (which means ‘to touch’).ĥ. Greek word Tri (which means 3) and the Latin word angulus (which means corner or angle).Ĥ. Greek word Chorde (which means a piece of animal gut used as a string in a lyre).ģ. A Greek word Circulus (meaning to hoop around or from a diminutive of the circular Roman circus).Ģ. Guess the mathematical term that was derived from the origin as stated below:ġ.
Symbols for numbers in different languages plus#
Plus or minus were used commonly by the Romans to indicate ‘more or less’.
Parabola was coined by Greek philosopher Apollonius, who had words for all three conic sections. The origin Arabic word is al-jabr which means the reunion of broken parts, where a subtracted quantity on one side of an equation became an added quantity when moved to the other side.ĭecimal is derived from the Latin decimus, meaning ‘tenth’. Many mathematical concepts such as the Abbe-Helmert Criterion and Zorn’s Lemma incorporate the names of people.Īlgebra was coined by Persian scholar/astronomer Al-Khowarizmi in 825 AD.
There is also an abundance of synonyms in this science - e.g modulus and absolute value, characteristic function and indicator function. For instance matrix and statistics received a lot of opposition as the origin of these words didn’t mean what they denote in mathematics. Some familiar math words which are part of our daily usage today were heavily opposed when coined. Addition and fraction were coined as early as 1100 AD while determinant came into existence as late as 1810. Moreover many specialised words associated with important concepts were not coined for years - mathematicians used the word radius for centuries before ‘diameter’ came into being. Therefore the process of word formation in maths is often quite unpredictable. Unlike other sciences where new jargon has to be approved by international organisations such as the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), math words formation is left to individual initiative. They gave us the Greek math words such as isosceles and convex. arithmetrika).Ī large body of mathematical work was produced between 300 BC and 300 AD by Greek mathematicians Euclid and Archimedes among others. Interestingly, until the middle ages, most math words had an extra ‘r’ (eg. Most mathematical terms are of Latin origin. Some French origin words include surface and surjection. Number words such as one, two, three, four and measurement terms such as foot, yard, etc originate from Old English.įrench words were introduced after the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Thus, developed the Anglo-Saxon language aka Old English. The Romans brought Latin with them and later, other invaders brought their languages. When the Romans conquered Britain, the local population spoke Celtic. Most commonly used words in maths owe their origin to Old English. The deeper we study the subject, the more likely we will come across words that are unique to this scientific discipline. Every mathematical number or symbol has a corresponding word or phrase. But, it’s also associated with intriguing words. Mathematics is associated with numbers and symbols. Mathematics has a language of its own – Roopa Banerjee