term, in logic, the subject or predicate of a categorical proposition (q.v.), or statement. Aristotle so used the Greek word horos (“limit”), apparently by an analogy between the terms of a proportion and those of a syllogism. Terminus is the Latin translation of this word, used, for example, by the 5th-century Roman philosopher Boethius. Hence in medieval logic the word came to be used also for common and proper names generally and even for what were called syncate-gorematic terms—words such as and, if, not, some, only, except, which are incapable of being used for the subject or predicate of a proposition.
In mathematics, the terms of a fraction are the numerator and denominator. The terms of a proportion are the four numbers or expressions that enter into the proportion. Similarly, the terms of a sum are the numbers that are added together to constitute the sum or the numerical expressions denoting them. In this sense, an infinite series is thought of as a sum of an infinite number of terms; and a polynomial is a sum of a finite number of monomials, which are the terms of the polynomial. When the terms are quite complicated, they can be identified by the plus or minus signs by which they are demarcated.