Having looked at words for large numbers, let’s turn to the less-asked, but still interesting, question of where our words (in English) for ordinary little numbers come from. We’ll look at the origins of one, two, three, then eleven, twelve, thirteen, and then first, second, third.
Last time we looked at names of anniversaries (like “semiquincentennial” for the 250th), and other words based on Latin numbers (like “septuplets” for 7 babies). Let’s back up and look at the names in English for large numbers themselves, like million, trillion, and vigintillion. We’ll work up to the big ones!
This is the 250th anniversary of the United States, and as a result we’ve heard the term “semiquincentennial” a lot. (Well, a lot more than usual.) That reminded me of several past questions about such terms, so we’ll take a look at them now, starting (after a quick introduction) with one asked 25 years ago …
A recent question about the precise meaning of “difference” led me to some past discussions of the word.
A recent question asked about an interesting locus, which led me to realize we haven’t talked about that topic in general. Here we’ll look at what a locus is, using three simple examples, and then dig into a question about the wording.
Students sometimes wonder why the trigonometric functions (sine, cosine, tangent, secant, and so on) have the names they do, and how they relate to the corresponding terms in geometry. How are the tangent and secant functions related to tangent and secant lines in trigonometry? And what in the world is a sine? Here we’ll look …
(A new question of the week) We’ve looked at the concept of limit of a function from several perspectives, including why they are needed, and what the definition means. Here we have a more fundamental question, which applies to both functions and sequences: What do we mean when we say a value approaches some number? …
Last time we looked into terminology related to negative numbers; one subtopic was too big to fit, so I’ve broken it out into a separate post. How are the concepts of “negative” and “minus” (subtraction) related? How much do we need to distinguish them? We’ll look at two questions, the first from a child focused …
Last week we looked at what negative numbers mean; here we’ll consider a number of questions we’ve been asked about the terminology of signed numbers: what “negative” means, and other words for negative numbers. Up, down, and opposite This question from 1998 asks about translating words to signed numbers: Converting Words to Numbers Can you …
Sometimes the more basic an idea is, the harder it is to define it. It is also very hard to understand a definition in English when you are not a native speaker! We have had some interesting discussions of such issues recently with a student who asks very basic and yet very challenging questions of …