Number & MeasureGreek → English
Asymptote
/ˈæsɪmptoʊt/noun
A line that a curve approaches ever more closely without ever meeting it.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
not
σύν
sýn
together with
πίπτειν
píptein
to fall
Literally: “not falling together”
The story of the word
The word is a negative: it names what the line never does. Greek geometers used ἀσύμπτωτος for lines that do not meet however far they are produced, and English borrowed it in the 1650s. The verb buried inside it, πίπτειν, to fall, also built symptom, the thing that falls together with a disease.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1650s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
symptomptosisperipeteia
In a sentence
The graph flattens out towards a horizontal asymptote at y equals one.