asymptote
/ˈæsɪmptoʊ̯t/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.95 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A straight line which a curve approaches arbitrarily closely as it goes to infinity. The limit of the curve; its tangent "at infinity".
Example Sentences
- "The King rushed forward with all his cruel coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and logarithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a field of irrational numbers (F₁) and smote it so grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an n-dimensional orthogonal phase space, underwent expansion and came out, fuming factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him passing sore."
- "Language, in relation to thought, must ever be regarded as an asymptote."
- "2006: Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Perimeter of Ignorance As you become more scientific, yes, the religiosity drops off, but it asymptotes."
Etymology
circa 1650, from Ancient Greek ἀσύμπτωτη (asúmptōtē), the feminine of Apollonius Pergaeus' (circa 200 BC) Ancient Greek adjective ἀσύμπτωτος (asúmptōtos, “not falling together”), from ἀ- (a-, “not”) + συν- (sun-, “together”) + πτωτός (ptōtós, “fallen”). See also a-, syn-, -ote.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: ἀσύμπτωτη
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈæsɪmptoʊ̯t/
- British English: /ˈæsɪmptəʊ̯t/