Etymology

axiom of choice

Today it means: One of the axioms of set theory, equivalent to the statement that an arbitrary direct product of non-empty sets is non-empty; any version of said axiom, for example specifying the cardinality of the number of sets from which choices are made. Full definition →

German Axiom der Auswahl
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The story

  1. German · derived fromAxiom der Auswahl
  2. English todayaxiom of choice

A calque of German Axiom der Auswahl (now more commonly Auswahlaxiom), which first appeared in print with a description of the axiom in 1908, Ernst Zermelo, Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Mengenlehre I ["Investigations in the foundations of set theory I"], Mathematische Annalen, 65 (although the paper was dated 1907).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.