Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

THE TRISSOTETRAS. 75
The novelty of these words I know will seeme strange to some, and to the eares of
illiterate hearers sound like termes of conjuration ; yet seeing that since the very in-
fancie of learning, such inventions have beene made use of, and new words coyned,
that the knowledge of severall things representatively confined within a narrow com-
passe, might the more easily be retained in a memory susceptible of their impression,
(as is apparent by the names of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, and fifteen more
syllogistick moods, and by those likewise of Gammuth, A-re, B-mi, C-fa-uth, and
seventeen other steps of Guido's Scale, which are universally received by men of
understanding, and that have their spirits tuned to the harmony of reason,) I know
not why Logick and Musick should be rather fitted with such helps then Trigono-
metric, which, for certitude of demonstration, hath been held inferior to no science,
and for sublimity and variety of object, is the primest of the Mathematicks. This is
the cause why I framed the Trissotetras, wherein the termes by me invented, without
regard of the initiall letters of the words by them expressed, are composed of such as,
joyned together, are of most easie pronunciation ; as the tangent complement of a
subtendent is sooner uttered by Mu then by T C S ; and the secant complement of
the side required, by Ry, then in the usuall apocopating way, by the first syllables or
letters of secant complement, side, and required ; and considering that without open-
ing of the mouth no word can be spoken, which overture is performed by the vowel,
to all the sides and angles I designed vowels, that in the coalescencie of syllables,
sines, tangents, and secants might the better consound therewith.
THE EXPLANATION OF THE TRISSOTETRAS.
A. signifieth an angle ; Ab. in the resolvers signifieth abstraction, but in the figures
and datoquaeres the angle between. Ac. or Ak. the acute angle. Ad. addition. JSL.
the first base. Amb. or Am. an obtuse angle. As. angles in the plurall number.
At. the double verticall, whether externall or internal/. Au. the first vertical!
angle. Ay, the angle adjoyning to the side required.
B. or Ba. the true base. Bis, the double of a thing.
Ca. the perpendicular. Cra. the concurse of a given and required side. Cur. the
concurse 06 two given sides.
D. the partiall or little rectangle or rectanglet. Da. the datas. Di. or Dif. the dif-
ference. Dir. the directories. D. q. Datoquaeres. Diss, of unlike natures.
E. a side. Eb. the side between. Enod. enodandas. Ereled. turned into sides. Es,
sides in the plurall number. Ei, the side conterminall with the angle required.
Eu, the second verticall angle.
F. the new base, or angularie base, it being an angle converted into a side. Fig.
figures. Fin. Res. finall resolvers. For, or Fo, outwardly, often made use of in