cotangent
/ˈkoʊˌtænd͡ʒənt/noun
cotangent is a noun meaning “In a right triangle, the reciprocal of the tangent of an angle. Symbols: cot, ctg, or ctn” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-T-A-N-G-E-N-T, and it appears about once in every 30 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of cotangent is cotangents.
What does cotangent mean?
noun
- 1
In a right triangle, the reciprocal of the tangent of an angle. Symbols: cot, ctg, or ctn
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce cotangent?
- US /ˈkoʊˌtænd͡ʒənt/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-cotangent.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of cotangent
- cotangents plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is cotangent?
Cotangent appears about once in every 30 million words in written English, the 167,786th 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).
Cotangent in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense trigonometric function:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | cotangente |
| German | Kotangens |
| Portuguese | co-tangente |
| Spanish | cotangente |
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 cotangent come from?
From co- + tangent.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).