boundary term

boundary term (plural boundary terms)

1. (sociology) A word or phrase that is used for othering; a term that serves to identify someone or something as other than the speaker.
   • 2013, Frances Fahy, Henrike Rau, Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences, →ISBN, page 91:

     'Sustainability' is a boundary term, signifying complex interactions between science, politics, policy making and development (Scoones, 2010: 153-4).

   • 2014, Michael Raiber, David Teachout, The Journey from Music Student to Teacher: A Professional Approach, →ISBN:

     'Poor white trash' is likely the most enduring and degrading in a long line of 'stigmatypes'– 'stigmatizing boundary terms that simultaneously denote and enact cultural and cognitive divides between ingroups and outgroups' –such as 'redneck,' 'cracker,' and 'hillbilly.'

   • 2017, Paul Raymond Trebilco, Outsider Designations and Boundary Construction in the New Testament, →ISBN, page 227:

     A term which could be seen as a high boundary term ('the enemy' as opposed to 'the friend') is used, but Paul tells them, as it were, to dismantle such a boundary from the inside, by undertaking acts of love and compassion.

2. (mathematics) A term that must be added to an equation to represent a boundary condition.
   • 1996, Kojima Sadayoshi, Saito Kyoji, Matsumoto Y, Topology And Teichmuller Spaces, →ISBN:

     If M is truncated to have toral boundary, there will be a boundary term after the integration by parts step.

   • 2017, Ni Wei-tou, One Hundred Years Of General Relativity, →ISBN:

     Thus the boundary term ambiguity is under physical control: Each distinct choice of the quasi-local expression given by the Hamiltonian boundary term is associated with a physically distinct boundary condition.

• Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term