Word.ws English Dictionary

precalculus

precalculus noun: a course, or set of courses, that includes (specifically) trigonometry and algebra at an appropriate level to prepare students to study calculus.

Noun

precalculus (uncountable)

  1. A course, or set of courses, that includes (specifically) trigonometry and algebra at an appropriate level to prepare students to study calculus.
    • As we wrote the Precalculus course, we wanted to create interest for older high school students by presenting topics in a context, something that students could relate to so that they could see the value in their work.2016, Pam Goodner (lead writer/editor), Eureka Math Precalculus Study Guide, Wiley (Jossey-Bass), page ix
    • Similarly, many precalculus textbooks consider, for example, a colony of bacteria doubling in size every 3 hours, with the textbook then producing the formula e/3) for the growth factor after t hours.2017, Sheldon Axler, Precalculus: A Prelude to Calculus, Wiley, 3rd Edition, page xviii

Origin of precalculus

From pre- + calculus.

Questions about precalculus

What does precalculus mean?
Precalculus means a course, or set of courses, that includes (specifically) trigonometry and algebra at an appropriate level to prepare students to study calculus.
What part of speech is precalculus?
Precalculus is a noun.

Words near precalculus in the dictionary

  1. precalculated
  2. precalculates
  3. precalculating
  4. precalculation
  5. precalculations
  6. precalculus
  7. precalibrated
  8. precalibration
  9. precalibrations
  10. precambered
  11. Precambrian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: precalculus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-precalculus.wav.

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