It does not help that both reciprocal and inverse come from French, and that their common meanings are reversed in English. I'm not sure whether the meaning of

It does not help that both reciprocal and inverse come from French, and that their common meanings are reversed in English. I'm not sure whether the meaning of both words has remained constant over time in these two languages, as they both roughly mean "the opposite" and if you want to avoid ambiguity, you simply add context. For example, if you say "inverse function" or "multiplicative inverse" it's not ambiguous. Inverse function: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_function / https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijection_r%C3%A9ciproque https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijection_r%C3%A9ciproque Reciprocal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplicative_inverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplicative_inverse / https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse Wikipedia seems to have chosen "multiplicative inverse" over "reciprocal" for title, even though they are clearly indicated as synonymous.