tau
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Appendix:Variations of "tau"
Languages (46)
English
'Are'are • Catalan • Czech • Dutch • Finnish • French • Galician • German Low German • Hokkien • Huichol • Hungarian • Iban • Icelandic • Indonesian • Italian • Japanese • Kambera • Kapampangan • Kendayan • Lithuanian • Makasar • Malay • Maori • Minangkabau • Niuean • North Frisian • Norwegian Bokmål • Norwegian Nynorsk • Occitan • Polish • Portuguese • Sotho • Spanish • Tahitian • Tausug • Ternate • Tetum • Tocharian B • Tokelauan • Tongan • Tswana • Vietnamese • Welsh • White Hmong • Woccon
Page categories
'Are'are • Catalan • Czech • Dutch • Finnish • French • Galician • German Low German • Hokkien • Huichol • Hungarian • Iban • Icelandic • Indonesian • Italian • Japanese • Kambera • Kapampangan • Kendayan • Lithuanian • Makasar • Malay • Maori • Minangkabau • Niuean • North Frisian • Norwegian Bokmål • Norwegian Nynorsk • Occitan • Polish • Portuguese • Sotho • Spanish • Tahitian • Tausug • Ternate • Tetum • Tocharian B • Tokelauan • Tongan • Tswana • Vietnamese • Welsh • White Hmong • Woccon
Page categories
Etymology
| ← sigma |
  |
→ upsilon |
| Wikipedia article on tau | ||
A tau (sense 3) used as the symbol of the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony in the Antoniterkloster Höchst, a former monastery in Höchst, a quarter of Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany.
From Middle English tau, taue, from Latin tau, from Ancient Greek ταῦ (taû) and Hebrew תָּו (tav).
Sense 6 (“mathematical constant equal to 2π”) was used by Joseph M. Lindenberg in 1991, and popularized by the American educator and entrepreneur Michael Hartl in a 2010 paper which explains that τ resembles π; and that τ is the Greek equivalent of t, the first letter of turn, and 2π corresponds to one turn of a circle with a radius of one unit.[1]
Sense 8.1 (“short for tau lepton or tau particle”) was coined by the American physicist Martin Lewis Perl (1927–2014) after the first letter of Ancient Greek τρίτον (tríton, “third”), since the tau lepton or tauon was the third charged lepton discovered.[2]
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /taʊ/, /tɔː/
- (General American) IPA(key): /taʊ/, /tɔ/
Audio (General American); /taʊ/: (file)
- Rhymes: -aʊ, -ɔː
Noun
tau (plural taus)
- The letter Τ / τ in the Greek alphabet; being the nineteenth letter of the Classical and Modern Greek, and the twenty-first letter of the Old and Ancient Greek alphabets.
- Alternative form of taw; the 22nd and last letter of many Semitic alphabets/abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic.
- 1847, Richard Edmund Tyrwhitt, Sermons Chiefly Expository, volume I, Oxford: John Henry Parker; F[rancis] and J[ohn] Rivington, London, page 366:
- Hence it appears that the spits, or skewers, on which and to which the lamb was fixed and fastened in order to be roasted, assumed the form of a cross, not such a tau-cross as is engraved in Dr. Oliver’s Historical Landmarks of Freemasonry, vol. i. p. 80. having three arms only like the Greek letter tau; but a cross like the ancient Hebrew tau, with four arms, though not necessarily all of equal length.
- 1851, D[aniel] Rock, Hierurgia; or Transubstantiation, Invocation of Saints, Relics, and Purgatory, Besides Those Other Articles of Doctrine Set Forth in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Expounded; […], 2nd edition, London: C. Dolman, […], page 350:
- In the Spanish translation of Sallust, by the Infant Don Gabriel in 1772, called the Infant Sallust, there is a curious dissertation by Father Perez Bayer on the resemblance between the ancient Hebrew and Phœnician alphabets, in which it is observed that the Hebrew Tau was written in pure Phœnician, […]
- 2017, Piers Vaughan, Capitular Development Course, 2nd edition, Rose Circle Publications, →ISBN, page 135:
- The tau is both the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, and also the 22nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this context, the Hebrew tau or tav is more pertinent.
- A Τ-shaped object or sign; a Saint Anthony's cross, sometimes regarded as a sacred symbol.
- 1658, Thomas Browne, “The Garden of Cyrus. […]. Chapter I.”, in Hydriotaphia, Urne-buriall, […] Together with The Garden of Cyrus, […], London: […] Hen[ry] Brome […], →OCLC, page 96:
- Nor ſhall we take in the myſticall Tau, or the Croſſe of our bleſſed Saviour, which having in ſome deſcriptions an Empedon or croſſing foot-ſtay, made not one ſingle tranſverſion.
- (Christianity) A crosier with a Τ-shaped head.
- The ankh symbol (☥).
- Synonym: crux ansata
- (astronomy) Chiefly written τ: used to designate the nineteenth star (usually according to brightness) in a constellation.
- (finance) A measurement of the sensitivity of the value of an option to changes in the implied volatility of the price of the underlying asset.
- (mathematics, neologism) Chiefly written τ: an irrational and transcendental constant representing the ratio of the circumference of a Euclidean circle to its radius, equal to twice the value of pi (2π; approximately 6.2831853071).
- (neurology) Short for tau protein (“a protein abundant especially in the neurons of the human central nervous system that stabilizes microtubules, and when misfolded is associated with forms of dementia such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases”).
- 1999, Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, London: Harper Perennial, published 2004, →ISBN, page 263:
- Quite what that job is remains obscure, but one theory is that it is to stabilise another protein called tau, which is supposed in turn to keep in shape the tubular ‘skeleton’ of a neuron.
- (physics) Chiefly written τ.
- Short for tau lepton or tau particle (“an unstable elementary particle which is a type of lepton, having a mass almost twice that of a proton, a negative charge, and a spin of ½; it decays into hadrons (usually pions) or other leptons, and neutrinos; a tauon”).
- (historical) Short for tau meson, now known as a kaon.
Derived terms
Translations
the letter Τ / τ in the Greek alphabet
|
a letter of many Semitic alphabets — see taw
Τ-shaped object or sign
crosier with a Τ-shaped head
Saint Anthony’s cross — see also Saint Anthony's cross
|
ankh symbol — see ankh
used to designate the nineteenth (usually the nineteenth brightest) star in a constellation
irrational and transcendental constant equal to twice the value of pi
short for tau protein — see also tau protein
short for tau lepton or tau particle — see tauon
short for tau meson — see also kaon
References
- Michael Hartl (2010 June 28) “The Tau Manifesto”, in Tauday.com, archived from the original on 30 January 2022, section 4.1 (One Turn):
- There are two main reasons to use τ for the circle constant. The first is that τ visually resembles π: after centuries of use, the association of π with the circle constant is unavoidable, […] The second reason is that τ corresponds to one turn of a circle, and you may have noticed that “τ” and “turn” both start with a “t” sound.
- Martin L[ewis] Perl (1977 April) Evidence for, and Properties of, the New Charged Heavy Lepton (SLAC-PUB-1923), archived from the original on 9 July 2021, section 1 (Introduction), page 3; published in Trần Thanh Vân, editor, Proceedings of the Twelfth Rencontre de Moriond: Flaine, Haute-Savoie, France, March, 6–18, 1977 (Moriond Proceedings; 19), volumes 1 (Leptons and Multileptons), Orsay, Paris: Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Particules Elémentaires [Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and Elementary Particles], Université de Paris-Sud, 1977, →OCLC, pages 75–97:
- Since there is now substantial evidence that it [the new elementary particle] is a lepton, we wish to designate it by a lower case Greek letter. We use because it appears to be the third charged lepton to be found and τριτον means third in Greek. We feel the old use of to designate the three pion decay mode of the K is now obsolete.
Further reading
tau on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Anagrams
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.