Euclidean terms in European languages, 1482–1703

Abstract

This paper reports on the degree of lexical instability in European translations of the Elements published up to the end of the seventeenth century. As well as the intrinsic interest of the formation and stabilization of a Euclidean tradition in these languages, the wide visibility of Euclidean material in the period makes it likely that the terminological choices made by early translators were influential in the wider formation of mathematical vocabularies in the languages concerned. The paper shows that instability was distributed unevenly across languages and semantic areas, and reports where the pockets of higher and lower instability were located.