abacuses

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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the voluntary recall of abacuses imported by LTD Commodities and ABC Distributing of Bannockburn, Ill. The federal agency said in a statement Monday the educational toys have rods that can detach, creating a chocking hazard for young children.

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Definitions (16)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A manual computing device consisting of a frame holding parallel rods strung with movable counters.
  2. noun Architecture A slab on the top of the capital of a column.
  3. Word History
    The adjective dusty, with its connotations of disuse and age, might seem an appropriate word to describe the abacus, since this counting device was used for solving arithmetical problems in the days before calculators and computers. Originally the abacus was, in fact, dusty. The source of our word abacus, the Greek word abax, probably comes from Hebrew 'ābāq, "dust,” although the details of transmission are obscure. In postbiblical usage 'ābāq meant "sand used as a writing surface.” The Greek word abax has as one of its senses "a board sprinkled with sand or dust for drawing geometric diagrams.” This board is a relative of the abacus with movable counters strung on rods that is familiar to us. The first use of the word abacus, recorded in Middle English in a work written before 1387, refers to a sand-board abacus used by the Arabs. The difference in form between the Middle English word abacus and its Greek source abax is explained by the fact that Middle English borrowed Latin abacus, which came from the Greek genitive form (abakos) of abax.

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Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (20)

  • Or are the US album charts counted by hand, using huge ledgers and abacuses? —  No Rock And Roll Fun
  • Nerdly joy in the knowledge that the plural of "abacus" is "abacuses" —  Schmutzie.com
  • Listen to me, Sara Face Alternative, I would need a varsity team of 102 math-club geeks plucking away at their abacuses for 84 weeks to calculate that number. —  Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com
  • The abacuses used by the district have 10 rows, each with 10 beads, which help children understand place value in the base-10 numbering system.
  • She passed out small abacuses to each student and worked with them as she demonstrated double-digit numbers and simple addition.
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