Definition of Tangent. a line of thought that is off topic. Examples of Tangent in a sentence. 1.
When my uncle is drunk, he will talk about one subject for a moment and then go off on a tangent about a completely different topic.
What does tangent mean?
countable noun. A tangent is
a line that touches the edge of a curve or circle at one point
, but does not cross it.
What does tangent mean in a sentence?
1 :
an abrupt change of course
: digression the speaker went off on a tangent. 2a : the trigonometric function that for an acute angle is the ratio between the leg opposite to the angle when it is considered part of a right triangle and the leg adjacent.
What does it mean when something is tangent to something?
A tangent to a circle is a straight line which touches the circle at only one point. This point is called the
point of tangency
. The tangent to a circle is perpendicular to the radius at the point of tangency.
What does tangent mean in conversation?
:
to start talking about something that is only slightly or indirectly related to the original subject She went off on a tangent
about what happened to her last summer.
What is another word for tangent?
In this page you can discover 21 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for tangent, like:
touching
, in contact, tangential, contiguous, deviation, divergence, divergency, excursion, excursus, irrelevancy and tan.
What is a tangent in writing?
What Is a Tangent? A tangent is
any idea that doesn’t support the main thesis of your article
. If you’re writing an article called “4 Ways to Save Money on Your Winter Heating Bills” and start explaining how the sun is further away from the earth in the wintertime, you might be going off on a tangent.
How do you use the word tangent?
- When my uncle is drunk, he will talk about one subject for a moment and then go off on a tangent about a completely different topic.
- It surprised everyone when our history teacher went off on a tangent about physics.
What is the use of tangent?
One reason that tangents are so important is that
they give the slopes of straight lines
. Consider the straight line drawn in the x-y coordinate plane. The point B is where the line cuts the y-axis. We can let the coordinates of B be (0,b) so that b, called the y-intercept, indicates how far above the x-axis B lies.
What is a tangent example?
The tangent of an angle is the trigonometric ratio between the adjacent side and the opposite side of a right triangle containing that angle. Example:
tan(A)=68 or 34
and tan(B)=86 or 43 . …
How do you describe a tangent?
In geometry, the tangent line (or simply tangent) to a plane curve at a given point is
the straight line that “just touches” the curve at that point
. Leibniz defined it as the line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve. … The word “tangent” comes from the Latin tangere, “to touch”.
What are two tangent circles called?
In geometry, tangent circles (also known as kissing circles) are circles in a common plane that intersect in a single point. There are two types of tangency:
internal and external
.
What is a common tangent?
Definition of Common Tangent
A tangent to a circle is a line that passes through exactly one point on a circle and is perpendicular to a line passing through the center of the circle.
A line that is tangent to more than one circle
is referred to as a common tangent of both circles.
When someone is on a tangent?
If someone goes off on a tangent, they start
saying or doing something that is not directly connected with what they were saying or doing before
. The conversation went off on a tangent.
How do you find tangent?
The tangent function, along with sine and cosine, is one of the three most common trigonometric functions. In any right triangle, the tangent of an angle is
the length of the opposite side (O) divided by the length of the adjacent side (A)
. In a formula, it is written simply as ‘tan’.
What is tangent alert?
Use a “Tangent Alert!”
When
a meeting attendee recognizes that the group has gotten off topic, he or she
simply says, “Tangent Alert!” Everyone present recognizes that they have gotten off the subject.
