Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Anatomy A muscle that stretches or tightens a body part.
  • noun Mathematics A set of quantities that obey certain transformation laws relating the bases in one generalized coordinate system to those of another and involving partial derivative sums. Vectors are simple tensors.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In anatomy, one of several muscles which tighten a part, or make it tense, or put it upon the stretch: differing from an extensor in not changing the relative position or direction of the axis of the part: opposed to laxator.
  • noun In mathematics, the modulus of a quaternion; the ratio in which it stretches the length of a vector.
  • In anatomy, noting certain muscles whose function is to render fasciæ or other structures tense.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) A muscle that stretches a part, or renders it tense.
  • noun (Geom.) The ratio of one vector to another in length, no regard being had to the direction of the two vectors; -- so called because considered as a stretching factor in changing one vector into another. See Versor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A muscle that stretches a part, or renders it tense.
  • adjective Of or relating to tensors
  • verb To compute the tensor product of two tensors.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of several muscles that cause an attached structure to become tense or firm
  • noun a generalization of the concept of a vector

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin tēnsor, from Latin tēnsus, past participle of tendere, to stretch; see tense.]

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