plusprep.n.adv.adj.

Etymology: Ultimately < classical Latin plūs (adverb) more, (noun) greater amount or number, more (Old Latin plous (2nd cent. b.c.); < an extended form (-u- extension) of an ablaut variant (zero-grade) of the Indo-European base of fele adv. and adj.²), functioning as the comparative of multus much (see multi- comb. form). Compare French plus (1546 in Middle French indicating an addition in a series of objects, 1613 as noun in sense ‘mathematical symbol of addition’; end of the 10th cent. in Old French as adverb in sense ‘more’), German plus (late 15th cent.), Dutch plus (second half of the 17th cent.).The prepositional use (sense A. 1), from which all the other English uses developed, did not exist in Latin of any period. It probably originated in the commercial language of the Middle Ages (see discussion at minus prep., n., adv., and adj.). The signs + and − occur for the first time in print in J. Widmann Behende vnd Hubsche Rechenung auff allen Kauffmanschafft (1489), a treatise on commercial arithmetic; but while Widmann refers to the latter as minus , the former is said to stand for mer (i.e. mehr ): ‘was − ist, das ist minus, und das + ist das mer’. So far as is known, English examples of plus do not occur as early as those of minus . In a somewhat different sense, Latin plus and minus had been employed in 1202 by Leonardo Pisano (also known as Leonardo Fibonacci) for the excess and deficiency in the results of the two suppositions in the Rule of Double Position (see position n. 2); see further M. Cantor Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik (ed. 2, 1899) II. 230–1. As to the origin of the symbol +, the most likely is that it originated as one of the manuscript abbreviations of the Latin et ‘and’ (see F. Cajori Hist. Math. Notations (1928) I. iii. 229–39). Instances of the written word (as opposed to the symbol) are rare before the 17th cent.; however, compare overplus n., adj., and adv.