Timeline for How did "normal" come to mean "perpendicular"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:27 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
|
|
| Jul 4, 2016 at 15:36 | answer | added | Joonas Ilmavirta | timeline score: 10 | |
| Jun 30, 2014 at 5:45 | comment | added | Robert Israel | You might also look up "regular" and "rule", which both come ultimately from Latin "regula", original meaning a straight piece of wood. | |
| Jun 27, 2014 at 12:07 | comment | added | Todd Trimble | @Anixx Linguistics would have been a good place at the outset, but now that Carlo Beenakker has taken the trouble to give a scholarly reply and has been rewarded here for it, it wouldn't be right IMO to transfer it. Also I think the mathematicians here will learn something they probably wouldn't have learned otherwise. | |
| Jun 27, 2014 at 11:36 | answer | added | krowe | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 20:35 | comment | added | Charles | @KetilTveiten: Both meanings were present when the word entered the English language. Latin normalis referred literally to a builder's square but carried the secondary meaning of 'things conforming to the usual rules' which eventually gave way to the modern meaning of 'normal'. | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 10:13 | comment | added | Anixx | Can I suggest this to be moved to Linguistics.SE? | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 9:41 | vote | accept | Michał Masny | ||
| Jun 26, 2014 at 8:33 | comment | added | Ketil Tveiten | So now we should ask the converse question: if normal originally meant right-angled, how did it come to mean ordinary? (Although that is probably a question for another place than MO...) | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 7:29 | answer | added | Carlo Beenakker | timeline score: 84 | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 7:20 | comment | added | Michał Masny | @CarloBeenakker Thank you. This answers my question completely. I'm not sure what the procedure is now. Perhaps you could make it an answer, and I'll accept it? | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 7:16 | comment | added | Carlo Beenakker | math.stackexchange.com/questions/328662/… --- normalis already meant right-angled in classical Latin. | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 6:24 | comment | added | Michał Masny | @MonroeEskew Indeed, there are. :) I asked this question because a of a similar complaint I read on this site today. | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 6:22 | comment | added | Monroe Eskew | There are way too many things in mathematics called "normal," "regular," etc. | |
| Jun 26, 2014 at 6:15 | history | asked | Michał Masny | CC BY-SA 3.0 |