An indeterminate is simply a variable that is not known or solvable. It is usually denoted by a mathematical alphabet (, , , or , , etc...). It is important to distinguish between a variable and an indeterminate in that a variable is solvable, at least conditionally. To make this more precise, let's see two examples:

1. Let be a variable such that , where . Then . Here is solvable conditioned on the equation given. Any values of and will yield a value for .
2. Let be an indeterminate such that , where . Since can not be solved, we have and . Note that if and are previously assigned to be values other than 2 and 3 respectively, then is no longer an indeterminate.