Are there textbooks that cover most etymological aspects of mathematics?

Question

In most of the science textbooks I read, I observed that most of them contain the terms, definitions and etymology too.

But nowadays, the mathematics textbooks are becoming more formal and contain only the relevant terms and their corresponding definitions.

Consider the following scenario:

The probability mass function is a function from the powerset of a sample space to [0,1].

The probability density function is a positive function that integrates to 1 on totality.

Both are formal definitions. Needs to be remembered.

There is some intuitive explanation regarding why we call mass function and density function. First, one tells about the value directly and hence called mass and the second one gives information about probability or area under it as probability and hence it is called a density function.

Do the textbooks covering all these aspects in historical etymology view exist for major fields of mathematics?

Answer 1

There are already some books dedicated to etymological aspects of mathematics. Here are two of them:

• Origins of Mathematical Words: A Comprehensive Dictionary of Latin, Greek, and Arabic Roots by Anthony Lo Bello (https://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/origins-of-mathematical-words)
• The Words of Mathematics: An Etymological Dictionary of Mathematical Terms Used in English by Steven Schwartzman (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029890.1995.12004620)

For mass:

• Bello: mass The Latin noun massa means a lump.
• Schwartzman: mass (noun): from Greek maza "kneaded dough." The Indo-European root is mag - "to knead, fashion, fit," as seen in native English make. A related borrowing from Greek is magma, a fiery mass of molten rock. The nontechnical sense of mass is "stuff, substance." In physics, mass is defined as a measure of a body's tendency to resist changes in velocity.

For density:

• Bello: From the Latin adjective densus meaning thick, close was formed the noun densitas by the addition of the suffix -itas to the stem of the adjective. This noun entered French as densité and from there came into English as density.
• Schwartzman: dense (adjective), density (noun): from Latin densus "having its particles close together, crowded, thick." The word is used with its meaning virtually unchanged in English. In topology a set S is said to be dense in a space P if every point in P is a point or a limit point of S. In physical applications, density is defined as mass of matter per unit of volume.