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<br>—[[User:Herbee|Herbee]] 20:56, 2004 Mar 25 (UTC)
:It's not that Webster is wrong, per se—the English "sine" does come from ''sinus''—but the reason why ''sinus'' was used is much more interesting than you assume. My source is Carl B. Boyer, ''A History of Mathematics'', 2nd ed. (see references). He writes (p. 209):
::...Thus was born, apparently in India, the predecessor of the modern trigonometric function known as the sine of an angle; and the introduction of the sine function represents the chief contribution of the ''Siddhantas'' to the history of mathematics. Although it is generally assumed that the change from the whole chord to the half chord took place in India, it has been suggested by Paul Tannery, the leading historian of science at the turn of the century, that this transformation of trigonometry may have occurred at Alexandria during the post-Ptolemaic period. Whether or not this suggestion has merit, there is no doubt that it was through the Hindus, and not the Greeks, that our use of the half chord has been derived; and our word "sine," through misadventure in translation (see below), has descended from the Hindu name, ''jiva''.
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