TheTibetanastronomer Pelgön Thrinle (second half of the 15th century – first half of the 16th century) depicted on a 1685block print using an abacus consisting of atrayscattered withsand(sense 1)
From LateMiddle Englishabacus,abagus,agabus(“abacus; art of counting with an abacus”), fromLatinabacus,abax(“sideboard or table with a slab at the top; slab at the top of a column; counting board, sand table; board for playing games”) (compareLate Latinabacus(“art of arithmetic”)), fromAncient Greekἄβαξ(ábax,“slab, counting board; board covered with sand for drawing; plate; dice-board”).Doublet ofabaque.
[a.1387, Ranulphi Higden [i.e.,Ranulf Higden], chapter X, inJohn Trevisa, transl., edited byJoseph Rawson Lumby,Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis; together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century.[…] (Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages), volume VII (in Middle English), London:Longman & Co.,[…];Trübner & Co.,[…], published1879,→OCLC, book VI,page69:
He [Gerebertus] was þe firste þat tookabacus of Sarsyns, and ȝaf rules þerynne, þat mowe unneþe be understonde of þe kunnyngeste men of þe craft, þe whiche craftes men beþ cleped abaciste.Marianus.Abacus is a table wiþ þhe whiche schappes be portrayed and i-peynt in powdre, andabacus is a craft of geometrie.
He [Gerebertus] was the first who took theabacus of the Saracens and gave rules for it, which can be barely understood by the most learned men of the craft, whose craftsmen are called abacists.Marianus. Theabacus is a table with which shapes are portrayed and painted in powder, andabacus is [also] a branch of geometry.]
1825, “a modern Greek” [pseudonym;Robert Mudie], “Education of the Athens”, inThe Modern Athens: A Dissection and Demonstration of Men and Things in the Scotch Capital, 2nd edition, London: Printed for Knight and Lacey,[…],→OCLC,page269:
[H]e set fondly and furiously to work upon[Thomas] Simpson'sEuclid, [...] The smooth grassy sod answered all the purposes of theabacus, and the cows generously supplied him in a substitute for sand. Spreading and smoothing that substitute with his bear foot, he engraved upon it with his finger the mystic lines and letters; and, with book in hand, proceeded to establish the elementary principles of geometry, [...]
Before leaving the question of early arithmetic I should mention that for practical purposes the almost universal use of theabacus or swan-pan rendered it easy to add or subtract, or even to multiply and divide, without any knowledge of theoretical mathematics. [...] [I]t will be sufficient here to say that they afford a concrete way of representing a number in the decimal scale, and enable the results of addition and subtraction to be obtained by a merely mechanical process.
The computer is but another vehicle to employ in helping people learn, a cousin of books, films, blackboards, chalk, gerbils,abacuses. Like each of these devices, it can be well used or misused.
1999,Stan Gibilisco, Norman Crowhurst, “From Counting to Addition”, inMastering Technical Mathematics, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.:McGraw-Hill,→ISBN, part 1 (Arithmetic as an Outgrowth of Learning to Count),page10:
Take another look at theabacus to see how useful it is. Each row represents a successively higher counting group, or register, by 10 times. Thus, with only 6 rows you can count to one million (actually, up to 999,999, which is 1 short of one million).
2001,Augusto Boal, “The Impossible Return and the Strangeness of the Familiar”, inAdrian Jackson, Candida Blaker, transl.,Hamlet and the Baker’s Son: My Life in Theatre and Politics, London; New York, N.Y.:Routledge,→ISBN,page342:
BeforePythagoras it was necessary to see the thing before counting it, like children who learn onabacuses, with balls sliding along rods: children learn to add and subtract by sliding stones.
2004, Patricia J. Murphy, “The Bottom Deck”, inCounting with an Abacus: Learning the Place Values of Ones, Tens, and Hundreds, New York, N.Y.:The Rosen Publishing Group,→ISBN,page 8:
Each rod in the bottom deck of anabacus has 5 beads. The value of each bead depends on which rod it is on. Each bead on the ones rod in the bottom deck equals 1. Each bead on the tens rod in the bottom deck equals 10. Each bead on the hundreds rod in the bottom deck equals 100.
2007,Valerie Anand, “Hope and Fear”, inThe House of Lanyon (The Exmoor Saga), Richmond, London:Mira, published2008,→ISBN,page209:
She was sitting at the parlour table with a smallabacus in front of her. [...] Peter still recorded weights of fleeces and pounds of cabbages and bushels of grain by cutting notches in tally sticks, but Liza would translate them into figures on paper and have them totted up on theabacus the very same day.
1795 June 11, 18, 25,William Wilkins, “XIV. An Essay towards the History of theVenta Icenorum of theRomans, and ofNorwich Castle; with Remarks on the Architecture of theAnglo-Saxons andNormans.[On the Architecture of NORWICH Castle.]”, inArchaeologia: Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, volume XII, London: Published by theSociety of Antiquaries of London; printed byJ[ohn] Nichols, printer to the Society;[…], published1796,→OCLC,page160:
The only mouldings uſed, both by the Saxon and Norman architects, were thetorus, theſcotia orreverſed torus, thecavetto orhollow moulding, and a kind ofchamfered faſcia, which latter was generally uſed forimpoſts orabacuſes to their capitals.
1829 June, “Cathedrals of Salisbury and Amiens Compared, by the Late Rev. G. D. Whittington, in the Sixth Chapter of His ‘Survey of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France.’ 1811.”, inThe Crypt, or Receptacle for Things Past, and West of England Magazine, volume I, part I, number VI (New Series), Winchester, Hampshire: Published by Charles Henry Wheeler,[…],→OCLC,page245:
At Amiens, the square form of theabaci, and the volutes of the capitals, afford a decisive proof that the Norman fashion had not yet been superseded. On the other hand, at Salisbury, theabaci are mostly round, and where foliage is used in the capitals, their graceful and luxurious design clearly shews an advancement in that department of the art.
The stones of the cornice, hitherto called X and Y, receive, now that they form the capital, each a separate name; the sloping stone is called the Bell of the capital, and that laid above it, theAbacus.Abacus means a board or tile: I wish there were an English word for it, but I fear there is no substitution possible, the term having been long fixed, and the reader will find it convenient to familiarise himself with the Latin one.
1920, Frank Cousins, Phil M. Riley,The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia[1], Boston: Little, Brown, and Company:
The dentil course of the pedimental cornice takes the form of a peculiar reeded H pattern which is repeated in much finer scale on the edge of the corona, theabacus of the capitals and its continuation across the lintel of the door.
1942,Theodore Fyfe,Architecture in Cambridge: Examples of English Architectural Styles from Saxon to Modern Times, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: At theUniversity Press,→OCLC,page49:
The shafts carry the usual cubical capitals—surmounted by plain heavy impost stones in place of mouldedabaci—the one on the right being the better preserved.
1989, Eleni Vassilika, “The Work Methods of the Artisan at Philae”, inPtolemaic Philae (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta;34), Leuven, Belgium: Departement Oriëntalistiek, Uitgeverij Peeters,→ISBN,pages187–188:
TheHathorabaci above theMammisi capitals were only decorated on the east flank. Perhaps the decoration of theabacus was not regarded as important as the capital and although it is above the capital, its decoration was executed only when time constraints did not prevail.
2005,Robert Chitham, “Plates 20 and 21: The Ionic Capital I and II”, inThe Classical Orders of Architecture, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire; Burlington, Mass.: Architectural Press,Elsevier,→ISBN,page76:
Theabacus is moulded in three sections and has four main concave faces corresponding with the tapering volutes below and truncated by a short square face on the diagonal.
ABACUS, among the ancients, was a kind of cupboard or buffet.Livy, deſcribing the luxury into which the Romans degenerated after the conqueſt of Aſia, ſays they had theirabaci, beds, &c. plated over with gold.
1875, E[rnst Karl] Guhl, W[ilhelm David] Koner, “The Romans”, inF[rancis] Hueffer, transl.,The Life of the Greeks and Romans, Described from Antique Monuments: Translated from the Third German Edition, London:Chapman and Hall,[…],→OCLC, § 89 (Tables.—Tripods),pages446–447:
The plate and nicknacks, always found in elegant Roman houses, were displayed on small one or three legged tables (trapezophoron), the slabs of which (abacus, a word which, like trapezophoron, is sometimes used for the whole table) had raised edges round them: several richly ornamented specimens of such tables have been found at Pompeii. Fig. 446 shows a smallabacus resting on three marble legs, which has been found in the house of the "Little Mosaic-Fountain" at Pompeii.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
^FromE[rnst Karl] Guhl; W[ilhelm David] Koner (1875), “The Romans”, inF[rancis] Hueffer, transl.,The Life of the Greeks and Romans, Described from Antique Monuments: Translated from the Third German Edition, London:Chapman and Hall,[…],→OCLC, § 89 (Tables.—Tripods), figure 446,page446.
Elliott K. Dobbie, C. William Dunmore, Robert K. Barnhart, et al. (editors),Chambers Dictionary of Etymology (Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2004 [1998],→ISBN), page 2
...nec quiabaco numeros et secto in pulvere metas / scit risisse vafer, multum gaudere paratus, / si cynico barbam petulans nonaria vellat.
...nor the man who has the wit to laugh at the figures on thecounting board and the cones drawn in sand, ready to go off in ecstasies if a prostitute pulls a Cynic by the beard.
Sed cum inter initia imperii eburneis quadrigis cotidie inabaco luderet, ad omnis etiam minimos circenses e secessu commeabat, primo clam, deinde propalam, ut nemini dubium esset eo die utique affuturum.
But in the early stages of his rule he used to play every day on agaming board with ivory chariots. He would also travel from his retreat to the Circus games, even the least important ones, at first in secret and then openly. As a result, no one was in any doubt that he would be present in Rome that day at least.
“ăbăcus”, inCharlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879),A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“abacus”, inCharlton T. Lewis (1891),An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
"abacus", in Charles du Fresne du Cange,Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
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