Welcome to Algebraic Vocabulary

Algebra is like learning a new language. Just as a language has words, sentences, and grammar rules, algebra has its own vocabulary. Before you can write or solve algebraic expressions, you need to know what each building block is called and what it does.

In this section, we'll explore the key words you'll use constantly in algebra:

Variable — a letter that can change value
Constant — a number that stays fixed
Coefficient — the number in front of a variable
Term — a single building block in an expression
Expression — a group of terms combined together

Once you know these words, reading and writing algebra becomes much easier — just like how knowing vocabulary helps you read a book!

Variables

Variable

A variable is a letter that represents a value which can vary or change. Common variable letters include $x$ , $y$ , $a$ , $b$ , $n$ , and $h$ .

The word variable comes from the word vary, meaning to change. In real life, many things vary — the temperature outside, the price of a cinema ticket, or the number of goals scored in a match. In algebra, we use letters to represent these changing quantities.

Example

Real-world variables:

The time it takes to travel to school changes depending on traffic. We could call it $t$ .
The price of a house changes over time. We could call it $p$ .
Your height grows each year. We could call it $h$ .

Note

When writing algebra, we do not use the multiplication symbol $\times$ with variables, because it looks too similar to the letter $x$ . Instead, we write the number and letter together: $7 h$ means "7 times $h$ ".

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