Sunday Rest: antilog. Word Not To Use Today.

An antilog, despite appearances, isn't somewhere you discover too late is a disastrous place to have a picnic.

But if it were, I think I'd be rather fond of the word.

Sunday Rest: antilog. An antilog is not a log containing an ants' nest, but a mathematical term.

Because 10 x 10 x 10 (that is, three tens multiplied together) is a thousand, it means that the logarithm base 10 of a thousand is 3.

The antilog is the same thing the other way round: a thousand is the antilog of 3 to base ten.

Luckily for most of us this doesn't matter.

Anti- is Greek. The word logarithm (the long, seldom used, form of antilog is antilogarithm) was coined by John Napier (who could well have discovered them) from the Greek words logos, ratio or reckoning, and arithmos, number.