late Middle English: from Italian， Spanish， and medieval Latin， from Arabic al-jabr 'the reunion of broken parts'， 'bone-setting'， from jabara 'reunite， restore'. The original sense， 'the surgical treatment of fractures'， probably came via Spanish， in which it survives; the mathematical sense comes from the title of a book， 'ilm al-jabr wa'l-muḳābala 'the science of restoring what is missing and equating like with like'， by the mathematician al-Ḵwārizmī （see ALGORITHM）.