rectangle
/ˈrɛktæŋɡəl/noun
Four-sided figure with four right angles
From Latin rect- (right) + Latin angle (corner).
Lineage
rect-
angle
The story
Geometry gives us a wonderfully literal little construction: rect- contributes “right,” while angle contributes “corner,” so a rectangle is essentially a “right-corner thing.” The angular half wandered through Latin angulus and Old French angle, while its distant Germanic relatives include the ancestor of ankle—another word associated with a bend or joint. Medieval mathematicians used related Latin forms such as rectangulum, and by the 1570s English had settled on rectangle for the familiar four-sided figure. Euclid and later geometers could treat a square as a special rectangle, but everyday English usually pictures the longer, non-square version. Remember it as a shape whose name is an instruction: make every corner right.
Modern usage
An obscene Urban Dictionary usage referring to aggressive anal sex; another joking entry personifies rectangles as lanky squares.
- Heard in
- internet slang · humor
- See
- Urban Dictionary entries supplied in the research data