Etymology

tetration

tetr·at·ion
T1E1T1R1A1T1I1O1N1

Today it means: The arithmetic operator consisting of repeated exponentiation, by analogy with exponentiation being repeated multiplication and multiplication being repeated addition, ᵇᵃ denoting a to the power of a to the power of … to the power of a, in which a appears b times. Full definition →

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The story

PIE word *kʷetwóres From tetra- (prefix meaning ‘four’) + (itera)tion, from the fact that tetration is in fourth place after addition, multiplication, and exponentiation. The word was coined by the English mathematician Reuben Goodstein (1912–1985).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.