Number & MeasureGreek → English
Trapezoid
/ˈtræpəzɔɪd/noun
A four-sided figure with exactly one pair of parallel sides in American usage, and with none in British usage.
The Greek roots
τράπεζα
trápeza
table
εἶδος
eîdos
form, shape
Literally: “table-shaped”
The story of the word
Τράπεζα is τετρα- and πέζα, four feet, a table; the diminutive τραπέζιον gave the geometrical name. Euclid used τραπέζιον as a catch-all for quadrilaterals that were not squares, rectangles, rhombuses or rhomboids. The British and American definitions of trapezoid and trapezium are swapped, a mess that goes back to an eighteenth-century mathematical dictionary. In modern Greek τράπεζα is the ordinary word for a bank, from the money-changer's table.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
trapezetrapeziumtrapezius
In a sentence
Take the area of the trapezoid as the average of the parallel sides times the height.