divisor

American  

[dih-vahy-zer] / dɪˈvaɪ zər /

noun

Mathematics.

• divisors
  plural

1. a number by which another number, the dividend, is divided.

2. a number contained in another given number a certain integral number of times, without a remainder.

---

divisor British  

/ dɪˈvaɪzə /

noun

1. a number or quantity to be divided into another number or quantity (the dividend)

2. a number that is a factor of another number

---

divisor Scientific  

/ dĭ-vī′zər /

1. A number used to divide another. In the equation 15 ÷ 3 = 5, 3 is the divisor.

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• divisors
  plural

Etymology

Origin of divisor

1425–75; late Middle English < Latin dīvīsor, one who divides, equivalent to dīvīd- (variant stem of dīvidere to divide ) + -tor -tor

Explanation

In math, the number you're dividing by is called the divisor. In the equation 24 ÷ 6 = 4, the divisor is 6. Often math teachers use the word divisor simply to mean any number by which you're dividing another number, whether it divides evenly or leaves a remainder. An alternate definition is "a number that divides into another without a remainder." If you need to find the greatest common divisor of several numbers, you're looking for the largest number that divides evenly, with no remainder, into all of them.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

divisor divisors

But to keep things like stock splits and changes in its component stocks from distorting the Dow, its administrators created something called the Dow divisor.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 16, 2022

Multiply that result by the divisor and place the result in the second row under the third coefficient.

From Textbooks ● May 6, 2020

The −5 is the opposite of the 5 in the divisor.

From Textbooks ● May 6, 2020

Multiply that result by the divisor and place the result in the third row under the third coefficient.

From Textbooks ● May 6, 2020

“Boiled down,” stated Bobby Hargrew, “to its last common divisor, it is ‘Where, oh, where shall we spend our vacation?’”

From The Girls of Central High in Camp Or, the Old Professor's Secret by Gertrude W. Morrison

As is common in number theory, the conjecture deals with prime numbers that exactly divide a given number—what mathematicians call prime divisors.

From Scientific American ● Jul. 28, 2023

A prime number is a number that has exactly two distinct divisors: itself and 1.

From Scientific American ● Jul. 15, 2018

In practice divisors, will have degrees less than or equal to the degree of .

From Textbooks ● Feb. 13, 2015

The videos were each about 10 minutes long and contained two elements: his blackboard-style diagrams—Khan happens to be an excellent sketcher—and his voice-over explaining things like greatest common divisors and equivalent fractions.

From BusinessWeek ● May 19, 2011

The number composed of seventeen ones, 11,111,111,111,111,111, has only these two divisors, 2,071,723 and 5,363,222,357, and their discovery is an exceedingly heavy task.

From The Canterbury Puzzles And Other Curious Problems by Henry Ernest Dudeney