Number & MeasureGreek → English
Parameter
/pəˈræmɪtər/noun
A quantity held constant in one context that distinguishes cases within a family of equations or systems.
The Greek roots
παρά
pará
beside, alongside
μέτρον
métron
measure
Literally: “a measure alongside”
The story of the word
Built in Modern Latin in the seventeenth century for a specific line in the geometry of conic sections, a length measured beside the axis. Mathematics generalised it, statistics took it, computing took it again for the values handed to a function. The everyday sense of limits or boundaries, as in working within certain parameters, is twentieth-century drift, and probably owes something to people half-hearing perimeter.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1650s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
perimeterdiametergeometrysymmetrymetronome
In a sentence
Fit the model first, then check how sensitive it is to each parameter.