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Affixes: the building blocks of English
Affixes: the building blocks of English
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eigen-

Proper; characteristic.

[German adjective eigen, own.]

Terms are confined to mathematics and physics and often mimic German formations. Examples include eigenfrequency, one of the natural resonant frequencies of a system; eigenfunction, each of a set of independent functions which are the solutions to a given differential equation; and eigenvalue, each of a set of values of a parameter for which a differential equation has a non-zero solution (an eigenfunction) under given conditions.

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