A tangent to a circle is a straight line that touches but does not intersect the circle and is at right angles to a radial line drawn from the centre of the circle.
- In geometry, a tangent (or tangent line) to a curve is a straight line that touches but does not intersect the curve. It can be defined as a line through a pair of infinitely close points on a curve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent