matroid
Meaning
A structure that captures the essence of a notion of "independence" that generalizes linear independence in vector spaces and acyclicality in graphs.
Examples
A matroid can be defined in terms of bases. A matroid consists of a ground set as well as a set of bases which is a nonempty subset of the power set of the ground set.
Word Forms
matroids
Etymology
From matrix + -oid. They were so named by Hassler Whitney in 1935 in an article titled “On the abstract properties of linear dependence”.