ideal

The story

1. Latin · derived fromidea“idea”
2. Late Latin · derived fromideālis“existing in idea”
3. French · derived fromidéal
4. English todayideal

From French idéal, from Late Latin ideālis (“existing in idea”), by surface analysis, idea + -al, from Latin idea (“idea”); see idea. In mathematics, the noun ring theory sense was first introduced by German mathematician Richard Dedekind in his 1871 edition of a text on number theory. The concept was quickly expanded to ring theory and later generalised to order theory. The set theory and Lie theory senses can be regarded as applications of the order theory sense.

Words from the same roots