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We thought at first that it was a misprint but it really seems that "orghogonal" or "orghonormal" (with a g) means something different from "orthogonal" or "orthonormal" (with a t). Do you know where we can find a precise definition ?

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I think it's a typo. It's probably rather more common than other typos, because the letters "t,h,g" are very close to each other on a standard keyboard. As a result, it actually does appear in the literature rather more often than you'd expect, and always without definition.

(As such, I believe this post qualifies as a legitimate research question and shouldn't be closed, despite the fact that it's about a trivial typographical error. Hilarious!)

For instance, here it is in a google books search result. It appears in the second page of an article in a collection of proceedings of a conference, without any definition. Elsewhere in the article it seems to be talking about orthogonality.

Of course I'd be happy to be proven wrong - probably the best thing to do is to contact someone who's used the word in print. Maybe they know what it means.

Edit: More evidence: compare the title to that of the pdf link, Also this: where the previous sentence uses the word "orthogonal")

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  • $\begingroup$ If someone does contact a user of the word, please record the outcome as part of this answer either as an edit or a comment. $\endgroup$
    – Selene Routley
    Commented Jan 6, 2012 at 11:32
  • $\begingroup$ I've been trying... haven't found an email address yet! $\endgroup$
    – Benjamin Young
    Commented Jan 6, 2012 at 11:47
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    $\begingroup$ Dear @Benjamin Young: I would suggest avoiding link shorteners (like goo.gl) as they aid link-rot and prevent people from seeing the destination of the link. To get visually short links with a textual description, try the syntax [link-description](http://link-url), which gives the result link-description. Thank you very much. $\endgroup$
    – Ricardo Andrade
    Commented Dec 3, 2013 at 14:11
  • $\begingroup$ Oh, OK, I didn't know about that. Fixed. $\endgroup$
    – Benjamin Young
    Commented Dec 5, 2013 at 7:32
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    $\begingroup$ orthogonal vectors are perpendicular, while orghogonal vectors are merely perpandicular --- physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=214624 $\endgroup$
    – Carlo Beenakker
    Commented Dec 5, 2013 at 7:50

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