Derived

Derived is an English adjective and the past participle of derive, used to indicate that something is formed or obtained from another source. The term is widely used across disciplines to signal that a thing is not original but results from a process of transformation, abstraction, or calculation.

Derived comes from Latin derivare, meaning to draw off, via Old French deriver and then English derive. The sense of drawing off can be literal or figurative, referring to extraction, derivation, or evolution from a source.

In linguistics, derivation is a morphological process that forms new words by adding affixes or by internal modification, producing derived words such as happiness from happy or unimaginable from imagine. This is distinct from inflection, which marks grammatical features without changing the word's class.

In mathematics and science, objects may be described as derived when they are obtained from other quantities through a procedure. The derivative is the rate of change; a derived quantity or a derived unit is defined from base quantities, such as velocity (derived from length and time) or the joule (a derived unit). The term emphasizes dependence on a source.

In computing, a derived class inherits properties from a base class, reflecting a chain of inheritance. In copyright law, a derivative work is created from an original work and may require permission to reproduce or distribute; examples include adaptations, translations, and remixes.