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A shorthand English word for 3 multiplied by 4 is:

3 times 4

I am aware that this comes from spoken language as in "we have 3 four times", a version I know from my native language as well. I would like to investigate this word rather than the more formal multiplied by. I am curious as to how the word times may be conjugated in tenses and used in other types of sentence constructions while still keeping it's mathematical meaning.

Can I for example say sentences like the following?

  • 3 was timed with 4.
  • I will time 3 and 4.
  • The times-symbol (or time-symbol or timing-symbol?) is a dot.
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    You might like to note that the full OED defines the word times as a verb - trans. Math. colloq. To multiply (a number). It's regularly conjugated, so your first example should actually be 3 was timesed by 4 Note that to times and related derived forms are also used extensively in Building & Surveying contexts, where I don't think that "colloquial" tag applies so strongly, if at all.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 13:27
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    Where I grew up, we said 3 times 4 a lot more than we said 3 multiplied by 4. We also would have said I will times 3 by 4. Even more bizarre is that we also said 3 was times-ed by 4. We treated times as though it was a verb in its own and conjugated it as such. I can't claim that this usage is grammatically correct but that was how we spoke colloquially.
    – Phil14
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 13:43
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    Canadian here. Using "times" as a verb here is quite rare and very colloquial. It is very common to hear "three times three is nine" but the word "multiply" (or its derivatives) is used in other contexts, e.g. "What happens if you multiply a number by zero?".
    – Jim MacKenzie
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 14:43
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    My upper-Midwest American experience accords with @JimMacKenzie's—I would never say timesed or will times, only multiplied or will multiply, even though three times four is perfectly fine.
    – 1006a
    Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 1:21

3 Answers 3

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Realistically, a native English speaker will treat the verb as if it were times.

3 was timesed with 4.

I will times 3 and 4.

What's happening here is that the word "times" is not really a verb. "Times" means "instances of", as in

I rang the doorbell three times.

In the sentence

3 times 4 is 12.

The subject is "3 times 4", that is, 3 instances of 4. "3 times 4" looks like a sentence, with 3 as the subject, 4 as the object, and "times" as the third-person singular of "time" (and 3 construed as a singular), but that was not originally what it was.

Of course, that would mean we should be saying "1 time 4" and we don't. Ah well, if English were consistent, "fish" would be spelled "ghoti".

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    Note that the first two sentences here may be spoken by children still finding their way around the language, but not by adults.
    – Luke Sawczak
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 17:42
  • @LukeS - I agree. I think this answer might be more accurate if it began with Hypothetically... (as opposed to Realistically...)
    – J.R. ♦
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 20:50
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    @LukeSawczak -- I originally had a paragraph to exactly that effect, but I edited it out. Perhaps I should put it back.
    – Michael Lorton
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 22:20
  • @Malvolio 'Twould be my recommendation. :)
    – Luke Sawczak
    Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 2:52
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    I have to disagree with Luke and JR slightly. I've heard adults use "times" instead of "multiply" in the pattern described in this post. It's not that they don't know that "multiply" is the more correct term, they just either aren't especially well educated and/or well-spoken, or they simply aren't in the habit of bothering to use "multiply" in casual conversation. So Malvolio's answer is realistic (not just hypothetical), but it's just not quite idiomatic enough to not draw attention.
    – cjl750
    Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 5:46
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I don't understand what @Malvolio is advising. But I'm a math teacher and a native speaker of English. I would never say the expressions that he attributes to native speakers, and I would be amazed to hear a colleague say those expressions. I wouldn't say the expressions you ask about either.

With reference to multiplication, the word "times" is a noun, as it is in expressions like "I have seen that film two times." It has no important connection to the verb "to time," to measure the duration, as in "I thought you swam the lap very quickly, but I didn't time you." (I agree with Malvolio that seemingly the final s is a plural that would be inappropriate to the example "1 times 1". I never thought about it. Perhaps math people find it less distracting to treat the word as always plural, disregarding whether 0, 1/2, i, and each other number should be treated as singular or plural. I suppose you could as well ask why 3x4 is 12, rather than are 12. Whatever the reason, the word times in this sense always ends in s.)

So I would also say all of these things:

  • Three times four is twelve.

  • Three was multiplied by four.

  • I will multiply three and four.

  • The times symbol [not the time-symbol or timing-symbol] is a dot.

  • The multiplication symbol is a dot.

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  • The times symbol is not a dot. It is a rotationally symmetric saltire, resembling an x: ×. The multiplication symbol is, arguably, a dot.
    – Michael Lorton
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 22:24
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In the words of Elsa... Let it go.

Never correct a student on this one. My pet peeve is saying man verse woman, instead of man versus woman. They do this on ESPN now, sometimes, so I can understand teachers' consternation!

Four times four may mean 4 dot 4, or 4 x 4 for multiplication.

It might also mean 4 4 4 4 , 4,444 or 4+4+4+4 (which is, literally four, four times; or, 4 dot 4, or 4 times 4, or four multiplied by four)

In such cases, you might see four, four times.

This is a vestige of olde-timey teaching where teachers would demonstrate arithmetic (multiplication, in this case) by writing four fours (cardinal, numeral, integers, whole numbers, the symbol for four) on the chalkboard and point at them one-by-one for students to recite together.

This is similar to the technique of reciting "two and two are four, four and four are eight, etc.)

Notice I wrote "are" and not "is." We math teachers who are linguists and English nerds will say this, especially since we have our math kids journal in class once a week, or so."Is" ain't right in this case.

My great-grandpa was a former one-room-school-house educator, and this is how he taught me a few figures on car trips when I was little.

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