tensor

Meaning

Noun

1. A muscle that tightens or stretches a part, or renders it tense.
2. A mathematical object that describes linear relations on scalars, vectors, matrices and other algebraic objects, and is represented as a multidimensional array.
3. A mathematical object that describes linear relations on scalars, vectors, matrices and other algebraic objects, and is represented as a multidimensional array.
4. (obsolete) A norm operation on the quaternion algebra.

Verb

To compute the tensor product of two tensors or algebraic structures.

Synonyms

matrix

vector

tensor muscle

Translations

tensore

tenseur

Tensor

tensor

tensör

tensor

Spannmuskel

موتر

muscle tenseur

Spannmittel

τανύων μύς

τανυστής

العضلة الشّادّة

strekspier

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈtɛn.sə/

Etymology

Borrowed from New Latin tensor (“that which stretches”), equivalent to tense + -or. Anatomical sense from 1704.
Introduced in the 1840s by by William Rowan Hamilton as an algebraic quantity unrelated to the modern notion of tensor.
The contemporary mathematical meaning was introduced (as German Tensor) by Woldemar Voigt (1898) and adopted in English from 1915 (in the context of general relativity), obscuring the earlier Hamiltonian sense. The mathematical object is so named because an early application of tensors was the study of materials stretching under tension. (See, for example, Cauchy stress tensor on Wikipedia.Wikipedia)