tau
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tau¹
- /taʊ/ UK
- /tɔː/ UK
- /taʊ/ US
- /tɔ/ US
Rhymes with -aʊ, -ɔː
Where it comes from
From Middle English tau, taue, from Latin tau, from Ancient Greek ταῦ (taû) and Hebrew תָּו (tav).
Sense 7 was used by Joseph M. Lindenberg in 1991, and popularized by the American educator and entrepreneur Michael Hartl in a 2010 paper which explains that τ resembles π; and that τ is the Greek equivalent of t, the first letter of turn, and 2π corresponds to one turn of a circle with a radius of one unit.
Sense 8.1 (“ellipsis of tau lepton or tau particle”) was coined by the American physicist Martin Lewis Perl (1927–2014) after the first letter of Ancient Greek τρίτον (tríton, “third”), since the tau lepton or tauon was the third charged lepton discovered.
noun taus
- The letter Τ /τ in the Greek alphabet; being the nineteenth letter of the Classical and Modern Greek, and the twenty-first letter of the Old and Ancient Greek alphabets.
- Alternative form of taw; the 22nd and last letter of many Semitic alphabets/abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. Hence it appears that the spits, or skewers, on which and to which the lamb was fixed and fastened in order to be roasted, assumed the form of a cross, not such a tau-cross as is engraved in Dr. Oliver’s Historical Landmarks of Freemasonry, vol. i. p. 80. having three arms only like the Greek letter
- A Τ-shaped object or sign; a Saint Anthony's cross, sometimes regarded as a sacred symbol. Nor ſhall we take in the myſticall Tau, or the Croſſe of our bleſſed Saviour, which having in ſome deſcriptions an Empedon or croſſing foot-ſtay, made not one ſingle tranſverſion.
- A crosier with a Τ-shaped head.
-
The ankh symbol (☥).
Similar: crux ansata
- Chiefly written τ: used to designate the nineteenth star (usually according to brightness) in a constellation.
- A measurement of the sensitivity of the value of an option to changes in the implied volatility of the price of the underlying asset. (includes a list of coordinate terms)
- Chiefly written τ: an irrational and transcendental constant representing the ratio of the circumference of a Euclidean circle to its radius, equal to twice the value of pi (2π; approximately 6.2831853071).
- Ellipsis of tau protein (“a protein abundant especially in the neurons of the human central nervous system that stabilizes microtubules, and when misfolded is associated with forms of dementia such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases”). Quite what that job is remains obscure, but one theory is that it is to stabilise another protein called tau, which is supposed in turn to keep in shape the tubular ‘skeleton’ of a neuron.
- Ellipsis of tau lepton or tau particle (“an unstable elementary particle which is a type of lepton, having a mass almost twice that of a proton, a negative charge, and a spin of ½; it decays into hadrons (usually pions) or other leptons, and neutrinos; a tauon”).
- Ellipsis of tau meson, now known as a kaon.
Tau²
Where it comes from
Variant of Tao.
proper noun Taus
- A surname from Chinese.
TAU³
proper noun
- Initialism of Transvaal Agricultural Union
noun TAUs
- Abbreviation of treatment as usual
Thesaurus
Closest in meaning: subsection, crux, first, uat, neutrino, tao, aut, terminus, head, terminal, pier, phf, piers, fsu, kts, theta
Translations
Every language
noun Saint Anthony’s cross — see also Saint Anthony's cross
| Français | croix en tau |
|---|---|
| Deutsch | Taukreuz |
noun the letter Τ / τ in the Greek alphabet
| Español | tau |
|---|---|
| 한국어 | 타우 tau |
| 日本語 | タウ tau |
| 中文 | 陶 táo, 套 tào |
| Português | tau |
| Français | tau |
| Deutsch | Tau |
| Italiano | tau |
| Ελληνικά | ταυ taf |
| Русский | тау tau |
| العربية | تَاو tāw |
| עברית | טָאוּ tau |
noun ellipsis of tau protein — see also tau protein
| Français | tau |
|---|
Talk about this word "tau." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/tau. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. tau. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/tau "tau." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/tau.Cite this
@misc{tau_2026,
title = {tau},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/tau},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
