infinitesimal • \in-fin-ih-TESS-uh-mul\
• adjective 1 : taking on values arbitrarily close to but greater than zero 2 :
immeasurably or incalculably small
Examples:
Stella
includes a lottery ticket in every birthday card she sends despite the
infinitesimal chances that it will be a winning one.
"Across the
nation, voters in the magic age range of 18 to 29 … have been coming out in
this year’s primaries at a rate 20 percent less than their mostly oblivious
elders, a rate which in South Florida would put their impact on the election
somewhere between sparse and infinitesimal." — Fred Grimm, The Miami
Herald, August 27, 2014
Did you know? Infinite,
as you probably know, means "endless" or "extending
indefinitely." It is ultimately from Latin infinitus, the opposite of
finitus, meaning "finite." The notion of smallness in infinitesimal
derives from the mathematical concept that a quantity can be divided endlessly;
no matter how small, it can be subdivided into yet smaller fractions, or
"infinitesimals." The concept was still in its infancy in 1710 when
Irish philosopher George Berkeley observed that some people "assert there
are infinitesimals of infinitesimals of infinitesimals, etc., without ever
coming to an end." He used the adjective in a mathematical sense, too, referring
to "infinitesimal parts of finite lines." Less than a quarter century
later, the adjective had acquired a general sense applicable to anything too
small to be measured.
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