# Simpler terminology for determinant and other matrix terms [closed]

Wondering what words you could use to describe the following Matrix properties.

The prefix eigen- is adopted from the German word eigen for "proper", "characteristic".

So that word is basically "matrix property" or "matrix attribute", which is rather generic.

The rest of the matrix terms for the most part make sense to me (inverse, skew, rotation, orthogonal, etc.).

After reading through the above definitions though, these words don't offer any visualization help. Wondering if there are any other words for these things that make it easier to understand, remember, or visualize.

• Why do you want to change the standard words for these things by other words? Saying "stol" instead of "four" does not change the essential properties of the notion $\bullet\bullet\bullet\bullet$. – Christian Blatter Mar 10 '19 at 18:57
• Mathematical ideas are often complicated, which requires the introduction of specialized language to deal with them (this is true in any field, by the way---the terms phone, phoneme, allophone, morpheme, etc are words which are difficult to keep separate, but which have distinct meaning in descriptive linguistics). Rather than demand that mathematicians come up with more "intuitive" language (which is actually likely to muddle things even more, as intuitive language can give rise to false friends), it might be better to just learn the definitions. – Xander Henderson Mar 11 '19 at 3:44