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> This ∞-shaped curve is called a 'leminscate', and ϖ is called the 'lemniscate constant'. I'll show you the leminiscate in my next post.

Two of these...do not belong?

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Shakespeare often spelt the same word differently at different times. If it was good enough for Billy Shakespeare, it should be good enough for modern-day mathematicians, forsooth.

This might feed the “Shakespeare was not one person” theory

The first of Shakespeare plays predate the first published English documentary. It was uncommon for spellings to be inconsistent or change between writings to be easier for a particular audience (in this case, actors) to be able to read.

I guess you mean:

first published English dictionary

and

It wasn't uncommon / It was common

Yes, I was rather tired and typing on my phone required more correcting of the autocorrect feature than I could manage.

I’m still making my way through it, but reading a history of shakespearean/elizabethan england, the first written publications of shakespeare’s plays that were accessible to the general public weren’t written by the man himself (if indeed he was singular).

There were entire efforts put towards pirating the plays by writing them, mostly from memory. It’s believed that someone in the crowd creating a stenographic copy would’ve been noticed so this is a less likely explanation. The memorial effort likely involved both audience and actors. “Official” versions meant to direct the stage productions might have been smuggled out or lost and found.

I haven’t gotten to the part yet that connects to the standard versions we have today. Some official versions were released to correct the record on bad pirated versions. Sometimes theaters would sell official versions to shore up funds.

Maybe this would explain the multiple shakespeare theory as well as writing inconsistencies?

You wouldn't download Hamlet's pirate story!

Yeah; frankly, in almost all languages, some early works of literature tend to be THE thing that establishes canonical spelling. A lot of this is simply that they act as an argument-settler when two people can't agree how something "ought to be" spelled. In fact, sometimes they go so far as to warp pronunciation, cementing little verbal quirks that only some speakers had.

"It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."

  -- Andrew Jackson

Unfortunately Daniel Webster ruined that for the rest of us.

I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare would spell the same wird dyfferntli as if heez noom is Sheikhspier een uh deefirind koontri.

"Lemniscate" is the correct spelling. All the other variants are mistyped.

It's quite funny imo that someday english people were like "forget about latin or german, greek is lit! Let's use greek"

What makes you think it was the English? I am pretty sure it comes from continental Europe.

Latin is lemniscus, so someday Latin people were like “let’s use Greek”

Latin writers have been like "let's use Greek" at least since Virgil, so modern writers can be excused for getting their roots mixed up.

A healthy mixture was always preferred in maths and science. This is occasionally taken to extremes; the name reverse transcriptase, an enzyme used by retroviruses, is a combo of English, Latin and Greek!

Arabic is also popular, particularly in maths.

Is it? I can only think of (the very frequently noted) ‘algebra’ and ‘algorithm’.

azimuth is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head

You'll find "zenith" at your feet.

You're thinking of nadir, also Arabic. The zenith is in the opposite direction.

Gah! So much for my wit.

Also ‘zero’, and ‘cipher’ (which, oddly, derive from the same word). And ‘average’. There are a few of them.

Not math but I just learned alkali is the word for "ash" in Arabic.

Interesting. I'm not sure we can really call these arabic-derived, though. They do seem to ultimately trace back to fairly unrelated arabic words, but their first use in mathematics (much later) seems to have come in the form of a mixture of words from European languages. The two examples I gave seem to be more legitimately Arabic in origin.

Dolphin, music (from muse), logic, ethics, physics, mathematics, pharmacy, angel, comedy, drama. The list of Greek loan words that are shared by many European languages goes on and on

Edit: I think almost every word with "ph" in it is from Greek and "th" in languages other than English.

They're asking about Arabic loanwords.

If you add all Latin words with Greek origins, most European languages are really forms of Greek

And “alcohol”, frequently consumed at science and math conferences

"Alcohol" has a very interesting etymology, too.

As others have said, there are a few celestial terms that come to mind:

  - azimuth
  - zenith
  - nadir

Also some chemistry terms, again just from top of brain, might be wrong:

  - alchemy
  - elixir
  - arsenic
  - alkali

Nadir always seemed very obviously Arabic to me. Weirdly, I first encountered it in a book on category theory, and only after that did I start to hear it used in everyday English to mean the opposite of 'apex'.

It's the opposite of zenith, another word ultimately derived from Arabic.

The difference between an apex and a zenith is that an apex exists as a point in space, while a zenith is a direction, with no fixed point which may be said to be "the" zenith. There are other differences given that apex has a few related meanings, but this is the main one.

Ah, yes. I knew it wasn’t quite the right word.

Sofa!

> Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device.

―C. P. Scott

The sheriff says "hold my beer".

A funny false or convergent etymology - shire reeve not sharif.

Here's another false trail from a real conversation:

  Q: What US state's name comes from the title of an Arabic ruler?

  A: Al Abama?

Of course, the correct answer is California from Khalifa transliterated through a Spanish novel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California#Las_Se...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calafia

Don't most European languages use Landis loan words from both Latin and Greek? Both used to be taught in classical education.

Why stop at greek or arabic when you can go all the way to sanskrit?

The words for sine and cosine derive from the sanskrit jiva (meaning bowstring, i.e., the chord of a circle)[1]. Sine and cosine were respectively jya and koti-jya, which got transcribed into arabic without the vowel (where it meant nothing). They then pronounced the vowel in the wrong place, calling it jeb (which meant pocket or fold in arabic)[2]. Then this wrong word got translated into latin as sinus (fold), and hence we have sine and cosine!

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jy%C4%81,_koti-jy%C4%81_and_...

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_and_cosine#Etymology

The wikipedia link has this occurring in the 12th century. But Hellenistic astronomers were already working with sine tables. What did they call the concept?

It's so evil that it defies spelling

Lemniscate.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BB%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%BD%CE%A...

Even the word has evil twins

I understand the confusion. Lemons smell good. The second root, on the other hand, far less pleasant.

Not to be confused with the "lemonscape", a hallucinated world you enter when you've eaten too many lemons.

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