Making contact at a single point or along a line; touching but not intersecting.
Irrelevant.
n.
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. tanMathematics 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.]
![[P]](http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/premium_mh.gif){kind=small}
