75 Years of Drift: The Changing Meaning of Phasor [History]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word phasor was deliberately introduced to engineering to replace the word vector, so that vector could be retained for applications in electromagnetic fields. (Bear in mind that dictionaries do not prescribe what words people ought to use; they describe what words people are using.) One of the added pleasures of using the OED is that it also gives quotations of the early uses of words.