Osculant

In mathematical invariant theory, the osculant or tacinvariant or tact invariant is an invariant of a hypersurface that vanishes if the hypersurface touches itself, or an invariant of several hypersurfaces that osculate, meaning that they have a common point where they meet to unusually high order.

References

• Salmon, George (1885) [1859], Lessons introductory to the modern higher algebra (4th ed.), Dublin, Hodges, Figgis, and Co., ISBN 978-0-8284-0150-0, https://archive.org/details/salmonalgebra00salmrich