High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The word term is from the Latin terminus which literally means "boundary line, limit", from the Proto-Indo-European root ter- "peg, post, boundary". In general mathematical use, however, the word "term" is not limited to additive terms. Individual factors in an expression representing a product would be multiplicative terms. Indeed, individual elements of any mathematical expression may be referred to as terms. Terms in first order logic constitute another use of the word.