additive identity

noun

Mathematics.

1. an element that when added to a given element in a specified set leaves that element unchanged, as zero in the real-number system.

Word History and Origins

Origin of additive identity¹

First recorded in 1955–60

Example Sentences

At a time when Florida is banning the acknowledgment of gender fluidity or any identity outside male and female, this subversive textbook unabashedly tells suggestible children that such things exist as “reciprocal identities,” “cofunction identities,” “additive identity property” and even “multiplicative identity property.”

Read more on Washington Post