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As I am not a native English speaker, I sometimes am bothered a little with the word "monoid", which is by definition a semigroup with identity. But why this terminology?

I searched some dictionaries (Longman for English, Larousse for Francais, Langenscheidts for Dentsch) but didn't find any result, and it seems to me that it is just a pronounciable word with certain mathematical meaning. So, where does it come from? Is there any etymological explanation? Who was the first mathematician who used it?

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    A couple of thoughts: a monoid is a structure with just ONE operation, and another name was needed other than group, semi-group, etc. Secondly, a monoid is, essentially, the same thing as a category with a SINGLE object. (Wikipedia)2012-06-11
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    @OldJohn Please put the categorical explanation in an answer :)2012-06-11

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