Three Cool Etymologies

What’s the first thing you think of when I say the word “matrix”? Mathematics? Programming? The movie?

Well, all of those are perfectly valid uses of the modern form of the word. However, “matrix” actually originated from the root “mater” meaning “mother”.

In fact, originally, “matrix” was a technical term for the uterus.

(You can still see that type of usage today, in biology, where we call the medium in which a bacterial sample will grow the “matrix”, or in anatomy, where the “matrix” of a nail is It is the part of the nail bed that produces the cells that become the nail proper.)

“Wait, what,” you murmur in justified confusion, “How in the world did it get from there to its current meaning?”

Well, it seems that it may have been all James Joseph Sylvester’s fault!

You see, while he was helping to create modern matrix theory, he also created the name for it! In his 1850 article, Additions to the articles in the September number of this journal, “On a new class of theorems,” and on Pascal’s theorem, he wrote that,

“For this purpose we must commence, not with a square, but with an oblong arrangement of terms consisting, suppose, of m lines and n columns. This will not in itself represent a determinant, but is, as it were, a Matrix out of which we may form various systems of determinants...”

the first ever use of “matrix” in a mathematical context!¹ ²

And that, my friends, is how the modern “matrix” was born!

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Consider: the word "quick" derives from the Old English "cwic" meaning "living, alive, animate".¹

This is where we get "quick" as in speedy or lively--

And also where we get "quickening": to become alive--

And that’s why you can cut your nails or a plant down to the living part, i.e. the "quick"!

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Did you know?

The word "cute" started out as an abbreviation of “acute,” originally meaning “keenly perceptive or sharp-witted, shrewd”.¹ The meaning only transferred to “pretty, fetching” via American students’ slang circa 1834."²

I’d say that's pretty cute!