19
$\begingroup$

I heard teachers say [cosh x] instead of saying "hyperbolic cosine of x".

I also heard [sinch x] for "hyperboic sine of x". Is this correct?

How would you pronounce tanh x? Instead of saying "hyperbolic tangent of x"?

Thank you very much in advance.

  • 5
    I remember with amusement the pronunciation "tank" by an applied mathematician of the old school. Don't know whether it was idiosyncratic or a Britishism. Also have heard "tsan" (with a lisp). And then there is "shine."2012-07-28
  • 4
    "Cinch" and "cosh", I've heard being used for the first two hyperbolic functions.2012-07-28
  • 2
    Looking around, apparently a number of people use "tanch" for the hyperbolic tangent...2012-07-28
  • 0
    "tanch". That's a very useful information. Thank you very much.2012-07-28
  • 5
    My professors used "cinch" (as in cinch a belt) for sinh, "cosh" (pronounced like the first part of "kosher") for cosh, and "tanch"(rhymes with branch) for tanh. None of these "verbal abbreviations" were presented as "official".2012-07-28
  • 0
    @DavidWheeler, thank you very much for your useful information!!2012-07-28
  • 1
    @J.M. Thank you very much for your kind info!!2012-07-28
  • 0
    Maybe it should be pronounced as "hip-tan" (some cooler version of tan $\ddot \smile$).2014-01-27
  • 0
    The position of "hyperbolic" and the name of the trigonometric function are reversed in french. I'm tempted to call the hyperbolic analogues 'ship', 'chip' and 'tip' from now on. Square chips are one better than square ships.2015-01-15
  • 2
    I think the moderators here are being far too pernickety. Mathematicians are human beings. When it comes to things like pronunciations they all have opinions. Does that mean mathematicians shouldn't come here to express their opinions or students shouldn't come here to find out what those opinions are? Some aspects of doing maths, in particular saying it out loud, will always be opinion based, it seems churlish to try and exclude discussion about it here.2016-05-24

7 Answers 7