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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

tensor.

A muscle that tightens or stretches a part, or renders it tense.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈtɛn.sə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɛn.sɔː/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɛn.sɚ/General-American/ˈtɛn.sɔɹ/General-American
  1. A muscle that tightens or stretches a part, or renders it tense.

  2. A mathematical object that describes linear relations on scalars, vectors, matrices and other algebraic objects, and is represented as a multidimensional array.

  3. A mathematical object that describes linear relations on scalars, vectors, matrices and other algebraic objects, and is represented as a multidimensional array. A multidimensional array with (at least) two dimensions.

  4. A norm operation on the quaternion algebra.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from New Latin tensor (“that which stretches”), equivalent to tense + -or. Anatomical sense from 1704. Introduced in the 1840s by William Rowan Hamilton as an algebraic quantity unrelated to the modern notion of tensor. The contemporary mathematical meaning was introduced (as German Tensor) by Woldemar Voigt (1898) and adopted in English from 1915 (in the context of general relativity), obscuring the earlier Hamiltonian sense. The mathematical object is so named because an early application of tensors was the study of materials stretching under tension. (See, for example, Cauchy stress tensor on Wikipedia.Wikipedia )

verb/ˈtɛn.sə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɛn.sɔː/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɛn.sɚ/General-American/ˈtɛn.sɔɹ/General-American
  1. To compute the tensor product of two tensors or algebraic structures.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from New Latin tensor (“that which stretches”), equivalent to tense + -or. Anatomical sense from 1704. Introduced in the 1840s by William Rowan Hamilton as an algebraic quantity unrelated to the modern notion of tensor. The contemporary mathematical meaning was introduced (as German Tensor) by Woldemar Voigt (1898) and adopted in English from 1915 (in the context of general relativity), obscuring the earlier Hamiltonian sense. The mathematical object is so named because an early application of tensors was the study of materials stretching under tension. (See, for example, Cauchy stress tensor on Wikipedia.Wikipedia )

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.