"В селе Коса на песчаной косе, распустив косу, стояла девушка с острой косой в руках, происходившая из народа Коса, при этом она, увы, была коса"
Слов меньше, чем понятий, и искать точное совпадение смыслов там, где смысл надо определить по контексту, не стоит. Тем более не стоит определять смысл по смыслу омонима из иной области. Ну, порешили Бурбаки именовать "группоид" - магмой. Что, надо раскалиться и течь?
Есть по крайней мере два разных смысла в математике - линейная функция и линейное отображение. Они разные, хотя связь есть (и ещё много понятий с прилагательным "линейный"). Механически смысл не переносится, а то придётся вспоминать, что изначальный смысл - "льняной".
Если же ограничиться поиском первого употребления, то, принимая во внимание, что это первое употребление в изданной статье или книге, а устно могло употребляться и ранее, то:
Цитата:
LINEAR ALGEBRA. The DSB seems to imply that the term algebra linearia is used by Rafael Bombelli (1526-1572) in Book IV of his Algebra to refer to the application of geometrical methods to algebra.
Linear algebra is found in English in 1870 in the American Journal of Mathematics (1881)4/107: “An algebra in which every expression is reducible to the form of an algebraic sum of terms, each of which consists of a single letter with a quantitative coefficient, is called a linear algebra.” [OED]
Linear algebra occurs in 1875 in the title, "On the uses and transformations of linear algebra" by Benjamin Peirce, published in American Acad. Proc. 2 [James A. Landau].
Pierce meant what today we would call a "finite dimensional algebra over a field," not the theory of vector spaces and linear transformations. [Fernando Q. Gouvea]
In 1898, Alfred North Whitehead wrote in a footnote in A Treatise on Universal Algebra with applications: “The type of multiplication is then called by Grassman (cf. Audehanungelebre vom 1862, §50) ‘linear.” But this nomenclature clashes with the generally accepted meaning of a ‘linear algebra’ as defined by B. Peirce in his paper on Linear Associative Algebra, American Journal of Mathematics, vol. IV (1881). The theorem of subsection (2) is due to Grassman, cf. loc. cit.” [Google print search by James A. Landau]
LINEAR COMBINATION is found in 1854 in “On a Theory of the conjugate relations of two rational integral functions, comprising an application to the Theory of Sturm’s Functions, and that of the greatest Algebraical Common Measure’ by J. J. Sylvester, in Abstracts of the Papers communicated the the Royal Society of London from 1850 to 1854 inclusive. [Google print search by James A. Landau]
LINEAR DEPENDENCE appears in the title “The Theory of Linear Dependence” by Maxime Bôcher published in 1900 in the Annals of Mathematics [James A. Landau].
LINEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION appears in J. L. Lagrange, "Recherches sur les suites récurrentes don't les termed varient de plusieurs manières différentes, ou sur l'intégration des équations linéaires aux différences finies et partielles; et sur l'usage de ces équations dans la théorie des hasards," Nouv. Mém. Acad. R. Sci. Berlin 6 (1777) [James A. Landau].
LINEAR EQUATION appears in English the 1816 translation of Lacroix’s Differential and Integral Calculus (OED).
LINEAR FUNCTION is found in 1829 in an English translation of Mécanique Céleste by Laplace. [Google print search by James A. Landau]
LINEAR INDEPENDENCE is found in 1846 in “Researches respecting Quaternions. First Series,” by Sir William Rowan Hamilton in Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. [Google print search by James A. Landau].
LINEAR OPERATOR. Linear operation appears in 1837 in Robert Murphy, "First Memoir on the Theory of Analytic Operations," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 127, 179-210. Murphy used "linear operation" in the sense of the modern term "linear operator" [Robert Emmett Bradley].
LINEAR PRODUCT. This term was used by Hermann Grassman in his Ausdehnungslehre (1844).
LINEAR TRANSFORMATION appears in 1843 in the title “Exposition of a general theory of linear transformations, Part II” by George Boole in Camb. Math. Jour. t. III. 1843, pp. 1-20. [James A. Landau]
LINEARLY DEPENDENT was used in 1893 in "A Doubly Infinite System of Simple Groups" by Eliakim Hastings Moore. The paper was read in 1893 and published in 1896 [James A. Landau].
LINEARLY INDEPENDENT is found in 1841 in “On a linear Method of Eliminating between double, treble, and other Systems of Algebraic Equations,” by J. J. Sylvester in The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science Vol. XVIII. [Google print search by James A. Landau]