|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1
stranger
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1 |
The word "chad" is much in the news here in the US. I looked it up in my Shorter OED and found that its origin is "unknown." Someone from the computer world (at least the old IBM punchcard world) must know where this word came from. Anyone?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
W3 has it as "perhaps from Sc., gravel".
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
i though it a corrupt pronounciation of chaff-- as to seperate the wheat from the chaff ( the hull of the wheat) and now sometimes used for waste. (as in old ticker tape machines, that punched out a tape message and left chaff. In the old ticker tape parades, it was the confetti like chaff that was tossed.) But i could be wrong!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460 |
Hi jamesmck: welcome to the board!
I don't know in what context the word is being used in the US, but Brewer has two references, the first to St Chad, the patron saint of springs [now why do leaping nuns come to mind?], and the second to that character whose bald head and large nose were depicted appearing over a wall and inquiring, "Wot, no [word filled in suit the circumstances]", as a comment or protest against a shortage or shortcoming. Widely used by the forces in WW2; created in 1938 by cartoonist "Chat" (George Edward Chatterton).
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
I get the impression that if you lived in Flori-duh you would know the current usage of the word - chad, see Marty's post at http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=8247It appears to be something to do with voting by punching holes - makes me think that our primitive "cross in a box" method has a lot going for it, although we do have plenty of "spoiled" votes too, sometimes people put a tick, rather than a cross and it doesn't count..
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
As you are probably all aware by now, chad is the little punchout from computer cards. The origin of chad is obscure, at best, but it happens that I know the truth.
Children today don't even know what an eighty column card is, but us old-timers who used to have to read the cards by hand when the card reader mangled them know. They were the invention of the devil.
But that's a tale for another time. Because of the paucity of capacity in computers, we developed abbreviations and acronyms and other miscellaneous shortcuts to keep within the limited parameters. Whenever a card went through the reader with one interpretation and was later interpreted another way, we knew there was a dangler, one of the little oblong punches was flapping back and forth, being read as punched one time and unpunched another. When this happened we had to have a computer code to tell us. "Card has a dangler" was too long, so we abbreviated it to CHAD.
And now, the rest of the story.
There actually isn't a word of truth in the above, but it beats the hell out of having it come out that it was named after the Chad of Chad and Jeremy!
TEd
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 18
stranger
|
|
stranger
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 18 |
I've just heard that there are different types of chads, distinguished according to their respective degrees of attachment: there are dangling chads, swinging door chads, and even pregnant chads.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
The following is from CNN yesterday. It has a nice plausible ring to it, although I'm still waiting for Jazz to give "chad" his inimitable attention.  Etymology: Possibly from the last name of the inventor of the Chadless cardpunch, which cut U-shapes in punch cards, rather than open circles or rectangles. (The U's formed holes when folded back.)
"Chad" would then be a back-formation from "Chadless" misunderstood: If the Chadless keypunches don't produce it, other keypunches must produce "chad."
The word appears to have entered the national lexicon in the late 1940s, around the time people began to refer to "bug" as a computer glitch after a researcher blamed a moth among a group of vacuum tubes for affecting ENIAC, the primitive computer powered by thousands of such tubes, said Payack. That was also about the time when IBM began using punch cards that warned users not to fold, spindle or mutilate.
quoted from http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/12/chad.derivation
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788 |
I can't say anything about the etymology of chad but I do know that, in the United States Navy in the late 1960's, we used radio teletypes to transmit lots of messages ship to shore. In addition to clacking out a typewritten message, the machines produced a long ribbon of paper tape, about 5/8ths of an inch wide, into which was punched a pattern of holes which represented each character in the message. The tiny bits of paper dislodged from the holes fell into a little drawer which had to be emptied periodically and the stuff which came out was called "chad."
A rotten trick to play on rookies (we called them "nugs" which meant "new guys") was to tell them that a message could be completely reconstructed from the chad, thus, from time to time, we would hold "chad drills" in which the new man was assigned to empty the little drawers as fast as possible, place the confetti into a burn bag and rush it to the incinerator for secure disposal. The new guy would return from this mission, red faced and breathless, to the laughter of his shipmates.
Chad also acquired a secondary meaning of junk, trash, a thing of no value, something to be discarded.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,347
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
0 members (),
631
guests, and
0
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
