Vector

How to spell vector

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vector

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vector mean?

1. nounA quantity that has both a magnitude and a direction, such as velocity or force.
2. nounAn organism, such as an insect, that carries and transmits a disease from one host to another.
3. nounA course or compass heading given to an aircraft to follow.

Vector in a sentence

• The physics exam asked students to add one vector to another and find the resultant.

• The mosquito is the main vector for malaria in tropical regions.

• Air traffic control gave the pilot a new vector to avoid the storm cell.

• Wind speed alone is a number, but wind described with direction becomes a vector.

• Public health officials worked to control the tick as a vector of Lyme disease.

• The controller assigned a vector that turned the jet onto the final approach.

Where does vector come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Vector comes directly from the Latin noun vector, meaning 'a carrier' or 'one who conveys', formed from the verb vehere, which literally meant 'to carry' or 'to transport'. That same vehere also gave English everyday words such as 'vehicle' and 'convey', so the core idea of carrying something along a path runs through the whole family. Scientists revived the Latin word in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: astronomers used a 'radius vector' for the line that seems to carry a planet around its orbit, and mathematicians later took it for any quantity that carries both a size and a direction. In the early twentieth century biologists borrowed it again for an organism that carries a disease from one host to another, keeping the literal Latin sense of 'a carrier' almost untouched. The spelling is wholly regular Latin, with no silent letters, which is why the real trap for writers is simply the unstressed second syllable that ends in -or rather than the tempting -er.

How the word is built

• vect- (from Latin vehere: to carry, convey)
• -or (agent noun suffix: that which carries)