Secant line a circle in the Euclidean plane, a line joining two of them would be a 2-secant (or "bisecant") and a line passing through only one of them would be a 1-secant (or "unisecant"). A unisecant in this example need not be a tangent line to the circle. This terminology is often used in incidence geometry and discrete geometry. For instance, the Sylvester–Gallai theorem of incidence geometry states that if points of Euclidean geometry are not collinear then there must exist a 2-secant of them. And the original orchard-planting problem of discrete geometry asks for a bound on the number of
Line (geometry) to give a foundation to build the notion on which would formally be based on the (unstated) axioms. Descriptions of this type may be referred to, by some authors, as definitions in this informal style of presentation. These are not true definitions and could not be used in formal proofs of statements. The "definition" of line in Euclid's Elements falls into this category. Even in the case where a specific geometry is being considered (for example, Euclidean geometry), there is no generally accepted agreement among authors as to what an informal description of a line should be when the subject