By now, you should be familiar with
variables and exponents,
and you may have dealt with expressions like 3x4 or 6x. Polynomials are
sums of these "variables and exponents" expressions. Each piece of the
polynomial, each part that is being added, is called a "term". Polynomial terms
have variables which are raised to whole-number exponents (or else the terms are
just plain numbers); there are no square roots of variables, no fractional
powers, and no variables in the denominator of any fractions. Here are some
examples: