释义
n.
the part of mathematics in which letters and other general symbols are used to represent numbers and quantities in formulae and equations
代数。
a system of this based on given axioms
代数学。
词源
"late Middle English: from Italian, Spanish, and medieval Latin, from Arabic al-jabr ‘the reunion of broken parts’, ‘bone-setting', from jabara ‘reunite, restore'. The original sense, ‘the surgical treatment of fractures', probably came via Spanish, in which it survives; the mathematical sense comes from the title of a book, ‘ilm al-jabr wa'l-muk ābala ‘the science of restoring what is missing and equating like with like', by the mathematician al-Kwārizmī (see ALGORITHM)."