• fraction •
Pronunciation: fræk-shên • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A fragment, part, piece broken off. 2. A small portion, a little bit. 3. The ratio of two numbers other than zero, expressed as 1/2, 3/4, 16/24. 4. Shattering, breaking to pieces.
Notes: This word has taken up residency in mathematical parlance without breaking its ties to the general vocabulary. It comes with an adjective, fractional, which may participate in its verbalization, fractionalize, or not: fractionate. Both verbs mean "to separate a mixture into portions with discrete properties by distillation or some other process."
In Play: The most frequent use of this word means "a little bit": "All good lies contain a fraction of truth." The mathematical sense is the second most frequent use: "Little Billie was good in arithmetic until he came to fractions."
Word History: Today's Good Word was taken directly from Late Latin fractio(n) "break, a breaking (into pieces)", the noun from frangere "to break in pieces, shatter", built on a nasalized (N added) version of PIE bhreg- "to break". Germanic and Celtic languages seem to have forgone nasalization, for we find Dutch breken "to break", German brechen "to break", English break and breech, Swedish bräcka "to break, crack", and Irish braic "a break". Because pants look split, Irish briste "breeches", Albanian brekë "trunks, underpants", and English breeches seem to all share the same source. (Barbara Beeton noticed all the variants of the Latin root in English words and suggested that we might want to explore them in the Agora.)
