oblong number

If, however, the sides differ otherwise than by 1, for instance, by 2, 3, 4 or succeeding numbers, as in 2 times 4, 3 times 6, 4 times 8, or however else they may differ, then no longer will such a number be properly called a heteromecic, but an oblong number. For the ancients of the school of Pythagoras and his successors saw “the other”³ and “otherness” primarily in 2, and “the same” and “sameness” in 1, as the two beginnings of all things, and these two are found to differ from each other only by 1. Thus “the other” is fundamentally “other” by 1, and by no other number, and for this reason customarily “other” is used, among those two speak correctly, of two things and not of more than two.