Multiply comes from the Latin roots multi (“many”) and pli (“folds”). English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) may have used the word first as a verb in his A Treatise on the Astrolab (1391). In multiplication, two natural numbers are multiplied together (the numbers are called factors; the less used terms for two such numbers are multiplicand and multiplier) producing what is called a product. Multiplication is actually a form of repeated addition. For example, 2 × 3 means 2 + 2 + 2 (or 6).