3 results for: tangents

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

tan·gent Audio Help (tān'jənt) Pronunciation Key

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adj.

Making contact at a single point or along a line; touching but not intersecting.
Irrelevant.

A line, curve, or surface meeting another line, curve, or surface at a common point and sharing a common tangent line or tangent plane at that point.
Abbr. tan Mathematics The trigonometric function of an acute angle in a right triangle that is the ratio of the length of the side opposite the angle to the length of the side adjacent to the angle.
A sudden digression or change of course: went off on a tangent during the courtroom argument.
Music An upright pin in a keyboard instrument, especially in a clavichord, that rises to sound a string when a key is depressed and stops the string at a preset length to set the pitch.

[Latin (līnea) tangēns, tangent-, touching (line), present participle of tangere, to touch; see tag- in Indo-European roots.]

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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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tangents

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The American Heritage Science Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

tangent Audio Help (tān'jənt) Pronunciation Key

A line, curve, or surface touching but not intersecting another.
The ratio of the length of the side opposite an acute angle in a right triangle to the side adjacent to the angle. The tangent of an angle is equal to the sine of the angle divided by the cosine of the angle.
The ratio of the ordinate to the abscissa of the endpoint of an arc of a unit circle centered at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system, the arc being of length x and measured counterclockwise from the point (1, 0) if x is positive or clockwise if x is negative.
A function of a number x, equal to the tangent of an angle whose measure in radians is equal to x.

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