Definition:Limaçon of Pascal/Linguistic Note
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Linguistic Note on Limaçon of Pascal
The word limaçon derives from the Latin limax, meaning snail.
It is a loan-word from the French, and should be pronounced something like lee-ma-son, following the French as closely as can be managed.
The diacritic underneath the c is a cedilla, whose purpose is to make it sound like s.
The word cedilla itself derives from old Spanish for little z, which is how it came about: as the bottom half of a minuscule cursive z.
The term Pascal's snail was invented by $\mathsf{Pr} \infty \mathsf{fWiki}$.
As such, it is not generally expected to be seen in this context outside $\mathsf{Pr} \infty \mathsf{fWiki}$.
Sources
- 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): limaçon of Pascal
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): limaçon of Pascal
- Weisstein, Eric W. "Limaçon." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Limacon.html