A delightful stimulus to expand my vocabulary is my subscription to "A.Word.A,Day" by Anu Garg -- and each Monday-through-Friday I get an email notification of a new word. This week's theme is "Words from Geometry" and today's word is tangent -- go here to read, learn, and enjoy Garg's discussion of this word.
And here is a link to this blog's earlier postings that include poetic consideration of the term tangent.