Lambda

How to spell lambda

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lambda

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lambda mean?

1. nounThe eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, written Λ or λ.
2. nounAn anonymous, unnamed function defined inline in a program.

Lambda in a sentence

• The physics paper used a lower case lambda to denote wavelength.

• The developer passed a short lambda to the sort function instead of writing a named one.

• The fraternity name began with a lambda and ended with a sigma.

• Using a lambda kept the filtering logic compact and readable.

Where does lambda come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Lambda is the name of the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, written as the capital Λ and the lower case λ. The Greeks took both the letter and its name from the Phoenician letter lamedh, whose name is generally understood to have meant 'goad' or 'cattle prod', a tool for driving oxen. As the alphabet passed from Phoenician traders to the Greeks somewhere around the eighth century before the common era, the Semitic name was reshaped into the Greek 'lambda', and the same letter later became the Roman 'L'. English borrowed the Greek name directly for scholarly use, and over time it became a familiar symbol in science, where the lower case λ commonly stands for wavelength, and in computing, where a 'lambda' is an anonymous, throwaway function. The spelling keeps the awkward 'mbd' cluster from the Greek, which is exactly the part that trips writers up, since the 'b' is easy to drop when sounding the word out.

How the word is built

• lambda (name of the eleventh Greek letter, from Phoenician lamedh)