Etymology

arctangent

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Today it means: Any of several single-valued or multivalued functions that are inverses of the tangent function. Symbol: arctan, tan⁻¹ Full definition →

English tangent ← Latin tangentem ← Proto-Italic *tangō
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*h₂erkʷ-
  2. Proto-Indo-European*h₂erkʷos
  3. Proto-Italic*arkuos
  4. Latinarcus
  5. Englisharc-
  6. Proto-Indo-European*teh₂g-
  7. Proto-Italic*tangō
  8. Latintangō
  9. Latintangēns
  10. Latintangentem
  11. Englishtangent
  12. English todayarctangent

From arc- + tangent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.