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Some new devices, like TV and phones, got words coined (television and telephone) to denominate them, but a lot of their parts did not. For example, dial (even though we no longer have phones with dials on them, the verb has yet to be replaced by key). The word dial comes via French from Latin dialis 'daily'. The original dial in English was a sun dial. Latter, this word was extended to two distinct devices: a control knob and a display instrument. Neither of these two dials is like a telephone's rotary dial.
My lexical journey in semantics, though is file. We all deal with files daily [sic]: computer files that is. The word came via French from Latin filum 'thread'. Multi-page documents were held together with string back in the middle ages, and this later developed into a folder full of documents (think of a police or personnel file), but today's text or sound files have little to do with that. They are just a collection of data stored on some media with a name and an icon associated with them to indicate what's inside. Also, file (as in rank and file) is a row of people or things as well as an archaic word for a list or roll of paper.
How do all those data get into the computer file? We key them in. Key is another one of those great polysemous words we use daily [sic]. From the Old English word cǣg 'key'. This can mean a metal implement to unlock doors, etc., but also in cryptography it can be a table or cipher for decoding encrypted messages (and down into the present a key is merely a file containing a number use to encrypt and decrypt important data. But a key can be something as abstract as a system of musical notes in fixed intervals. Our computer's keys had a long evolutionary history. From keyboard instruments of the middle ages to typewriter and telegraph keys to the keys I am pressing to write this text.
Pick almost any of the top 2 or 4K words by frequency of use in the English, and I would hazard that very few to none of them have a single meaning, and many of the more common ones have more that three or four.
[I am really getting tired of a preview function that renders glyphs properly, but then escapes them in posting.]
Last edited by zmjezhd; 10/31/09 04:18 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Huh. I leaned back and saw what I was looking at, and thought, "Aha--computer doesn't have more than one meaning". But compute does, and I have to grant that.
But you know, computer is really too restrictive a name for what they're used for now.
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Carpal Tunnel
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"Aha--computer doesn't have more than one meaning"Computer used to mean (see the OED): "One who computes; a calculator, reckoner; spec. a person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying, etc.". Now the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime, having become so regular an affair, and so established in all its forms; the number of writings must needs have increased accordingly, and to a pitch that has made it of absolute necessity for them to interfere continually with each other. Besides, it is reckoned, that there is not at this present a sufficient quantity of new matter left in nature, to furnish and adorn any one particular subject, to the extent of a volume. This I am told by a very skilful computer, who has given a full demonstration of it from rules of arithmetic. J. Swift, Tale of a Tub.
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Carpal Tunnel
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From keyboard instruments of the middle ages to typewriter and telegraph keys to the keys I am pressing to write this text.
I could dial you my files but I'd better keep them keyed.
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The fourth post in the following thread might be applicable hereFaldo's response still obtains.
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