“Sine” in maths *should* stem from the Greek for “chord”, but instead stems from “bosom” due to ballsing up translations. Sine is a Greek word, translated into Sanskrit, transcribed into Arabic, then mistranslated into Latin. The French for breast, for example, is “sein”. Here ends today’s reading.

Is this something you share with your classes?

I mean, sine waves do look like boobies

Same in Italian with seno

Someone made a tit of themselves

Math major here. Thank you. I always wondered where they got these weird-ass terms and, even if I managed to understand the concept mathematically, my understanding felt incomplete because of the words. Nice to know that it’s one of those very human things, a game of telephone.

See also the phugoid in aviation, from the Greek for “flight” but flight as in fleeing.