724: tangent, secant, and sine Dec 1, 2016

Words from Latin are adopted quite a bit more easily than words from Middle Eastern languages, and trigonometry offers a wonderful example of this. The word 'tangent', from a Latin meaning ‘touching’; the story ends there. The word 'secant' comes from Latin meaning 'cut'; the story ends there. 'Sine', however, was 'ardha-jya', abbreviated 'jya' in Sanskrit in the 5th century which meant, 'half-chord'. Later in Arabic texts this appeared as 'jiba', which having no original Arabic meaning to tether it eventually morphed into 'jaib' meaning 'bosom of a dress'. in the 12th century, this was finally translated into Latin, literally, with the word 'sinus' which denoted many things with curved shapes, like sinuses, but really it means 'breasts'.