catalecticant

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In mathematics, the invariant whose vanishing expresses that a quantic of order 2n can be reduced to the sum of n powers of order 2n. The catalecticant of the sextic (a, b, c, d, e, f, g) (x, y) is a,b,c,d b,c,d,e c,d,e,f d,e,f,g, and those of other orders are formed in the same way.