Definition:Prosthaphaeresis/Linguistic Note
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Linguistic Note on Prosthaphaeresis
The word prosthaphaeresis or prosthapheiresis is a neologism coined some time in the $16$th century from the two Greek words:
- prosthesis, meaning addition
- aphaeresis or apheiresis, meaning subtraction.
With the advent of machines to aid the process of arithmetic, this word now has only historical significance.
Ian Stewart, in his Taming the Infinite from $2008$, accurately and somewhat diplomatically describes the word as "ungainly".
Sources
- 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $5$: Eternal Triangles: Napierian logarithms