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Myriad
A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospheric languages ( Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnam), or when talking about ancient Greek numerals. More generally, a myriad may be used in colloquial vernaculars to imply an indefinitely large number. History The Aegean numerals of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations included a single unit to denote tens of thousands. It was written with a symbol composed of a circle with four dashes . In Classical Greek numerals, a myriad was written as a capital mu: Μ, as lower case letters did not exist in Ancient Greece. To distinguish this numeral from letters, it was sometimes given an overbar: . Multiples were written above this sign, so that for example would equal 4,582×10,000 or 45,820,000. The etymology of the word ''myriad'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sand Reckoner
''The Sand Reckoner'' ( el, Ψαμμίτης, ''Psammites'') is a work by Archimedes, an Ancient Greek mathematician of the 3rd century BC, in which he set out to determine an upper bound for the number of grains of sand that fit into the universe. In order to do this, he had to estimate the size of the universe according to the contemporary model, and invent a way to talk about extremely large numbers. The work, also known in Latin as ''Archimedis Syracusani Arenarius & Dimensio Circuli'', which is about eight pages long in translation, is addressed to the Syracusan king Gelo II (son of Hiero II), and is probably the most accessible work of Archimedes; in some sense, it is the first research-expository paper.Archimedes, The Sand Reckoner 511 R U, by Ilan Vardi accessed 28-II-2007. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Numerals
Chinese numerals are words and characters used to denote numbers in Chinese. Today, speakers of Chinese use three written numeral systems: the system of Arabic numerals used worldwide, and two indigenous systems. The more familiar indigenous system is based on Chinese characters that correspond to numerals in the spoken language. These may be shared with other languages of the Chinese cultural sphere such as Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Most people and institutions in China primarily use the Arabic or mixed Arabic-Chinese systems for convenience, with traditional Chinese numerals used in finance, mainly for writing amounts on cheques, banknotes, some ceremonial occasions, some boxes, and on commercials. The other indigenous system is the Suzhou numerals, or ''huama'', a positional system, the only surviving form of the rod numerals. These were once used by Chinese mathematicians, and later by merchants in Chinese markets, such as those in Hong Kong until the 1990s, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archimedes
Archimedes of Syracuse (;; ) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Considered the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time,* * * * * * * * * * Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitely small and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems. These include the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral. Heath, Thomas L. 1897. ''Works of Archimedes''. Archimedes' other mathematical achievements include deriving an approximation of pi, defining ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
10,000
10,000 (ten thousand) is the natural number following 9,999 and preceding 10,001. Name Many languages have a specific word for this number: in Ancient Greek it is (the etymological root of the word myriad in English), in Aramaic , in Hebrew [], in Chinese language, Chinese (Mandarin , Cantonese , Hokkien ''bān''), in Japanese language, Japanese [], in Khmer language, Khmer [], in Korean language, Korean [], in Russian language, Russian [], in Vietnamese language, Vietnamese , in Sanskrit अयुत [''ayuta''], in Thai language, Thai [], in Malayalam [], and in Malagasy language, Malagasy ''alina''. In many of these languages, it often denotes a very large but indefinite number. The classical Greeks used letters of the Greek alphabet to represent Greek numerals: they used a capital letter mu (Μ) to represent ten thousand. This Greek root was used in early versions of the metric system in the form of the decimal prefix myria-. The number ten thousand can also b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indefinite And Fictitious Numbers
Many languages have words expressing indefinite and fictitious numbers—inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as placeholder names, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier". Such words designed to indicate large quantities can be called "indefinite hyperbolic numerals". Specific values used as indefinite * In English, some words that have a precise numerical definition are often used indefinitely: couple, 2; dozen, 12; score, 20; myriad, 10,000. Unlike cardinal numbers these can be pluralized, in which case they require ''of'' before the noun (''millions of dollars'', but ''five million dollars'') and require the indefinite article "a" in the singular (''a million letters'' (indefinite) but ''one million letters'' (definite)). * In various Middle Eastern traditions, the number 40 is used to express a large but unspecific number,"Biblical Criticism", ''The Classica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Numerals
Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, are a system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal numbers and in contexts similar to those in which Roman numerals are still used in the Western world. For ordinary cardinal numbers, however, modern Greece uses Arabic numerals. History The Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations' Linear A and Linear B alphabets used a different system, called Aegean numerals, which included number-only symbols for powers of ten: = 1, = 10, = 100, = 1000, and = 10000. Attic numerals comprised another system that came into use perhaps in the 7th century BCE. They were acrophonic, derived (after the initial one) from the first letters of the names of the numbers represented. They ran = 1, = 5, = 10, = 100, = 1,000, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic ( Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overbar
An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a '' vinculum'', a notation for grouping symbols which is expressed in modern notation by parentheses, though it persists for symbols under a radical sign. The original use in Ancient Greek was to indicate compositions of Greek letters as Greek numerals. In Latin, it indicates Roman numerals multiplied by a thousand and it forms medieval abbreviations ( sigla). Marking one or more words with a continuous line above the characters is sometimes called '' overstriking'', though overstriking generally refers to printing one character on top of an already-printed character. An overline, that is, a single line above a chunk of text, should not be confused with the macron, a diacritical mark placed above (or sometimes below) ''individual'' letters. The macron is narrower than the character box. Uses Medicine In mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian step ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic period (), and the Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, although its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek, of which Attic Greek developed into Koi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns. Nowadays, certain words that usually had been classified as adjectives, including ''the'', ''this'', ''my'', etc., typically are classed separately, as determiners. Here are some examples: * That's a funny idea. (attributive) * That idea is funny. ( predicative) * * The good, the bad, and the funny. ( substantive) Etymology ''Adjective'' comes from Latin ', a calque of grc, ἐπίθετον ὄνομα, epítheton ónoma, additional noun (whence also English '' epithet''). In the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were inflected for gender, number, and case like nouns (a process called declension), th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mu (letter)
Mu (uppercase Μ, lowercase μ; Ancient Greek , ell, μι or μυ—both ) is the 12th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced bilabial nasal . In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 40. Mu was derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for water, which had been simplified by the Phoenicians and named after their word for water, to become 𐤌 (mem). Letters that derive from mu include the Roman M and the Cyrillic М. Names Ancient Greek In Ancient Greek, the name of the letter was written and pronounced Modern Greek In Modern Greek, the letter is spelled and pronounced . In polytonic orthography, it is written with an acute accent: . Use as symbol The lowercase letter mu (μ) is used as a special symbol in many academic fields. Uppercase mu is not used, because it appears identical to Latin M. Measurement *the SI prefix '' micro-'', which represents one millionth, or 10−6. Lowercase letter "u" is often substituted for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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