tensor

[ ten-ser, -sawr ]

noun

1. Anatomy. a muscle that stretches or tightens some part of the body.
2. Mathematics. a mathematical entity with components that change in a particular way in a transformation from one coordinate system to another.

tensor

/ tɛnˈsɔːrɪəl; -sɔː; ˈtɛnsə /

noun

1. anatomy any muscle that can cause a part to become firm or tense
2. maths a set of components, functions of the coordinates of any point in space, that transform linearly between coordinate systems. For three-dimensional space there are 3 r components, where r is the rank. A tensor of zero rank is a scalar, of rank one, a vector

tensor

/ tĕn′sər,-sôr′ /

1. A structure of quantities arranged by zero or more indices, such as a scalar (zero indices), a vector (one index), or a matrix (two indices), which is invariant under transformations of coordinates.
2. Any of various muscles that stretch or tighten a body part, as the muscle that acts to tense the soft palate, called the tensor palati .

Derived Forms

• tensorial, adjective

Other Words From

• ten·so·ri·al [ten-, sawr, -ee-, uh, l, -, sohr, -], adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of tensor¹

1695–1705; < New Latin: stretcher, equivalent to Latin tend ( ere ) to stretch ( tend ¹ ) + -tor -tor, with dt > s

Word History and Origins

Origin of tensor¹

C18: from New Latin, literally: a stretcher

Example Sentences

In seeking ways to optimize classical computing, Sels and his colleagues at the Simons Foundation focused on a type of tensor network that faithfully represents the interactions between the qubits.

From Science Daily

The team used diffusion tensor imaging to reconstruct the fascicles of 16 healthy adults in three dimensions.

From Science Daily

Since the tensors are often larger than what can be stored in the memory buffer on chip, the chip only grabs and processes a chunk of the tensor at a time.

From Science Daily

“I don’t expect someone in middle school to walk into a quantum field theory class and understand tensor math, right?”

From Science Magazine

Lines connected the dots to represent the gates, with each gate encoded in a tensor—a 2D or 4D grid of complex numbers.

From Science Magazine