cosecant
/ˈkoʊˌsiːkənt/noun
cosecant is a noun meaning “In a right triangle, the reciprocal of the sine of an angle. Symbols: cosec, csc” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-S-E-C-A-N-T, and it appears about once in every 87 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of cosecant is cosecants.
What does cosecant mean?
noun
- 1
In a right triangle, the reciprocal of the sine of an angle. Symbols: cosec, csc
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce cosecant?
- US /ˈkoʊˌsiːkənt/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-cosecant.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of cosecant
- cosecants plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is cosecant?
Cosecant appears about once in every 87 million words in written English, the 297,763rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Cosecant in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense reciprocal of the sine function:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | cosécante |
| German | Kosekans |
| Portuguese | co-secante |
| Spanish | cosecante |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does cosecant come from?
From co- + secant.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).