Identify meaning of a TeX string

Question

I'm trying to identify the meaning of some TeX symbols.

I don't work with it or anything, it just cropped up online and I was wondering if anybody could shed any light on it.

\ddot{x} + \delta \dot{x} + \alpha x + \beta x^3 = \gamma cos(\omega t)

Answer 1

Putting your example into a small TeX document (cos corrected to \cos)

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\[
\ddot{x} + \delta \dot{x} + \alpha x + \beta x^3 = \gamma \cos(\omega t)
\]

\end{document}

you have

It is easy to see that \alpha, \beta and so on generate Greek letters, \dot and \ddot provide "accents" that denote the first and second derivative of the variable x with respect to time t, and \cos generates the standard abbreviation for the cosine function.