computer

23 August 2019

Computer has a rather straightforward etymology, although its usage may be a bit surprising. The word was originally applied to people, not machines.

Computer is derived from the verb to compute + -er, a standard suffix that denotes a person that does the task of the attached verb. The verb to compute comes to us from Norman French and in turn from the Latin computare, meaning to calculate. The verb appears in English by the late sixteenth century. So, a computer is one who calculates, and the noun appears in English by the early seventeenth century. From Richard Braithwaite’s 1613 Yong Mans Gleanings:

I haue read the truest computer of Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number.

And many of these human computers were women, as calculation was considered mundane and repetitive work, beneath the dignity of men to perform, despite the fact that such calculations were often highly complex, requiring a high degree of mathematical skill.

Computer was being applied to machines by the mid nineteenth century. From Phemie’s Temptation, an 1869 novel by Marian Harland (the pen name of Mary Virginia Terhune):

[Phemie] plunged anew into the column of figures. [...] Her pen was slowly traversing the length of the page, at an elevation of a quarter of an inch above the paper, her eyes following the course of the nib, as if it were the index of a patent computer.

The use of the modifier patent indicates that this mechanical sense is relatively new, and that readers would be accustomed to thinking of computers as people, not machines.

The use of computer to refer to a programmable, electronic, calculating machine appears shortly after World War II. The exact date is uncertain. During the war, the US and Britain made use of calculating machines to crack Axis codes, and the word computer was used to denote these machines. Most were mechanical apparatuses, but a few were electronic, although not yet fully programmable like a present-day electronic computer. In the early citations of the word’s use to denote an electronic machine, it’s often difficult to determine if the word is used for a mechanical or an electronic device.

For example, in 1945 mathematician John von Neumann wrote:

Since the device is primarily a computer, it will have to perform the elementary operations of arithmetic most frequently.

Here he seems to be referring to a mechanical computer, saying the electronic device will primarily serve the function of a mechanical device. But in 1946, Bell Labs researcher George Stiblitz wrote:

If the computer is such that new formulas are easily set up in it, it may be economical to use it in the solution of 5 or 10 problems.

Here Stiblitz is referring to a programmable, electronic device. And by 1947 the term digital computer appeared in the journal Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation. But by 1950, the term was, without modification, widely understood to refer to the programmable electronic devices we’re familiar with today. From Philosophical Magazine of that year:

The problem of constructing a computing routine or “program” for a modern general purpose computer which will enable it to play chess.

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Source:

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s. v. computer, n., compute, v.

club sandwich

3 August 2019

The club sandwich, or club house sandwich, as it is usually prepared today, consists of three slices of bread, between which is layered turkey or chicken, ham or bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise. It is typically served quartered and held together by cocktail sticks.

But why club? How did it get its name? The answer is an unsatisfactory “we don’t know.” The sandwich originated in one or another social club or perhaps on the club cars of trains. The exact origin has been lost in the mists of time, but we do know that it originated in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

The earliest use of club sandwich that can be precisely dated comes from the New York Evening World of November 18, 1889:

Have you tried the Union Club sandwich yet? Two toasted slices of Graham bread, with a layer of turkey or chicken and ham between them, served warm.

But before we declare the Union Club of New York as the originator of the sandwich, there is this from the menu of Kinsley’s Restaurant in Chicago, also probably from 1889 (the date is somewhat uncertain):

Sandwiches—Club

Club sandwiches start popping up on a lot of restaurant menus from about this date. (Menus often aren’t dated, so this makes a precise chronology difficult.) There is also this one from the Lehigh Valley Railroad from about 1890:

Club Sandwich, Double 50 cents, single 30 cents

If the sandwich arose on the railroad, as opposed to in a social club, then then the club in the name would probably refer to the club car of a train.

And by 1893 the sandwich had reached the Pacific Coast, as the Woodland Daily Democrat of 18 May of that year makes reference to a “Bohemian Club sandwich,” a reference to the Bohemian Club of San Francisco.

These early versions were not as complex as the sandwich we know today. Here is a description of one from the Bucks County Gazette of Pennsylvania from 27 December 1894:

Club Sandwiches.—These are very tasty for after-theatre suppers, and are made of very thin white bread and butter, with the cold white meat of chicken, salted and peppered and laid on a leaf of lettuce, between the bread. Again, chopped green peppers or capers may be sprinkled over the chicken when the lettuce is omitted.

The triple-decker club sandwich that we know today was in place by the 1940s. Here’s a recipe from the US Department of Agriculture from 1942:

Club Sandwich
Toast
Lettuce
Cooked bacon or ham
Cold sliced chicken
Large, ripe, skinned tomatoes, sliced thin
Thick salad dressing
Radishes, olives, or pickles
Make double-decker sandwiches with slices of toasted bread from which the crust has been removed and the other ingredients arranged in layers of lettuce, bacon or ham, chicken, and tomato, with enough salad dressing to moisten. Insert toothpicks to hold the sandwiches together and garnish with crisp lettuce and radishes, olives, or pickles.

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Source:

Barrypopik.com, retrieved 3 August 2019.

Meat…for Thrifty Meals, Farmers’ Bulletin no. 1908, US Department of Agriculture, 1942, 36.

butler

8 August 2019

A butler is the chief servant in a household. The word comes to us from Anglo-Norman, the variety of French spoken in England following the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Norman word was buteiller, a cup-bearer or servant who served wine. The word ultimately comes from the medieval Latin buticularius. It is cognate with the word bottle, which is from the Anglo-Norman botel and the medieval Latin buticula. 

The role of a butler has shifted over the centuries. Once simply a cupbearer, the butler would go on to acquire responsibility a household’s wine cellar, and eventually to become the chief servant.

Butler is recorded as early as c. 1300, when the poem Kyng Alisaunder in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 622 has:

Alisaundre [...] afenge faire þat present, And departed [...] Sum to kniȝttes [...] Sum mareschales and botlers, To ȝoman, page, and joglers.

(Alexander [...] received those present according to degree, and [they] departed [...] some to knights [...] some stewards and butlers, to yeoman, pages, and jugglers.)

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Sources:

Middle English Dictionary, University of Michigan, 2014, s. v. boteler.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s. v. butler, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2016, s. v. bottle, n.3

bug (computer)

16 June 2020

Errors in computer code are known as bugs, but why? We can’t know for sure, but it is likely that the metaphor of an insect contaminating and gumming up the works of a mechanical or electric device is at its core. This particular use of the term arose in the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The ordinary sense of bug is of an insect, or to entomologists an insect of the order Hemiptera. This sense appears in the closing years of the sixteenth century. From John Hester’s 1594 medical text, The Pearle of Practise:

This medecine caused many times, a certain blacke bugge, or worme to come forth which had many legs, & was quicke: & after that the cancker would heale quicklie, with any conuenient medecine.

The origin of the standard sense of bug is unknown, but it may be from the sense of bug meaning a monster or evil spirit. (See bogey.)

The word moved into the world of invention by 1875, when it appears in the pages of the 15 August issue of The Operator, The Journal of Scientific Telegraphy:

The biggest “bug” yet has been discovered in the U.S. Hotel Electric Annunciator.

Some sources ascribe this sense to Thomas Edison. He did use the term, as evidenced by this 18 November 1878 letter to Theodore Puskas:

It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition—and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing gives out and then that —“Bugs”—as such little faults and difficulties are called—show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success—or failure—is certainly reached.

But as the earlier citation shows, Edison did not coin the term. He was just using a term that was current in the technological slang of the day. And while I do not know if Edison read The Operator, it’s just the sort of thing he would read.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the sense moved out of technical circles and into more widespread use, as witnessed by this statement by New York City Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia in the 22 July 1937 New York Times:

“No building code or any code of that kind can be drawn up without bugs, defects or jokers,” [La Guardia] commented. “The only thing to do with this code is to try it and be ready to amend it as soon as the bugs, defects and jokers appear. It is exactly like the airplane motor which looked perfect on the drafting board and which will not fly.”

9 September 1945 page from the logbook of the Harvard Mark II computer with a moth taped to it

And of course, it moved into the world of computing as soon as that world was created. The earliest reference to bugs in computers that I’m aware of dates to 9 September 1945. At 3:45 pm on that date computer workers on the Harvard Mark II machine at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia found a moth in a relay of the machine. They taped the insect into their logbook and recorded it as:

1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found.

Computer pioneer Grace Hopper, who worked on the Harvard Mark II, was fond of telling this story, and many have understood that fact to mean that she coined the term. But as with the case of Edison, the Mark II workers were just using a term they already knew, and the first actual case is a joke. It’s the first actual bug (i.e., insect), not the first defect in the machine or its code.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. bug n.4.

Hester, John. The Pearle of Practise, or Practisers Pearle, for Phisicke and Chirugerie. London: Richard Field, 1594, 14.

Hopper, Grace Murray. “Anecdotes: The First Bug.” Annals of the History of Computing, 3.3, July–September 1981: 285-86

“La Guardia to Sign New Building Code.” New York Times, 22 July 1937, 27.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2017, s.v. bug, n.2.

Shapiro, Fred R. The Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press, 2006, 226.

Photo credit: 9 September 1945, U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command photograph.

breaking bad

11 April 2014

The popular U. S. television show Breaking Bad (2008–13) is about a high-school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque who, after being diagnosed with lung cancer and with the assistance of an ex-student turned failed drug dealer, begins to cook and sell crystal meth. While the show has been popular with both audiences and critics, the title has baffled many. What does breaking bad mean? Where does the phrase come from?

The answers to these questions are not surprising, but digging the answer out of reference books is somewhat difficult, because for most of its life to break bad was not a catchphrase, but simply a normal verb phrase, consisting of a verb coupled with a variety of adjectives. One could break bad, but one could also break good, or break lucky, or break better, etc. It wasn’t until the 1960s that to break bad developed into a fixed phrase, with a sense of to become angry or belligerent, in African-American slang.

In U. S. slang the verb to break can have the meaning of to happen, to develop along a certain course or trajectory, and it seems to have made its appearance, like many American slang terms, in baseball. The Oxford English Dictionary records this sense, with a first citation from the 15 August 1914 Saturday Evening Post:

They say my homer was lucky [...] but, believe me, it was time things broke for me. They been breakin’ for him all his life.

Baseball use of the term, however, is older than this. The use of the verb to describe a pitch that deviates from the straight course of a normal fastball dates to at least 1899, when it is used by The Chicago Daily News on 8 October:

Katoll is spoken of as the possessor of a sizzling curve that comes up with a phenomenal burst of speed and breaks lightning fast.

And The Sporting Life of 13 May 1905 has this description of a spitball:

The deceptive feature of this delivery is the fact that it is nothing but a straight ball until just as the batter swings at it, then “breaks” sharply.

The noun phrase breaking ball to denote such a pitch is quite common.

But baseball is not the starting point for this use of the verb; cricket is. In 1884 famed cricketer W. G. Grace writes in The Pall Mall Gazette:

He says that a fast bowler can “break” both ways, but admits that this cannot be done with precision.

Almost simultaneously with the verb’s appearance in baseball, it broke into general slang as well, and we find the first instance of broke bad that same year. Again from The Saturday Evening Post, this time from a 1905 article about baseball, the writer uses the verb more generally:

He knows things are liable to “break wrong” for him some time and that he will be the object of criticism [...] Things broke bad, didn’t they?

Early uses like this tend to come in baseball contexts, although cartoonist H. C. Fisher in 1907 writes about his character A. Mutt (who the following year would be joined by his partner Jeff):

Showing here how tough things broke for A. Mutt yesterday.

The 1928 You Gotta Be Rough: The Adventures of Detective Fiaschetti of the Italian Squad has:

Things weren’t breaking right, and he was broke.

Carroll and Garrett Graham’s 1930 Queer People has:

Everything broke lucky for her.

Even William Faulkner uses the verb in this fashion, in his 1934 novel Pylon:

If things break right today, I’ll get you a bottle.

Such examples of the verb to break paired with various adjectives can be found right up to the present day. But the use of break bad as a fixed phrase isn’t recorded until the 1960s, when it starts appearing in African-American slang with the sense of to become aggressive or angry. Claude Brown’s 1965 novel Manchild in the Promised Land has:

Down home, when they went to town, all the n[——]rs would just break bad, so it seemed.

And the New York Times has this from its 30 September 1992 issue:

I don’t want to make eye contact with this sucker because he may break bad on me.

The earlier uses of break bad are primarily in the sense of things taking an unfortunate turn, of bad luck. The use of the sense of break bad to mean to turn to criminal or evil acts would appear to be influenced by the African-American sense. It’s a short step from anger and aggression to criminality.

The creator of the TV series, Vince Gilligan, says the phrase was common when he was growing up in Richmond, Virginia in the 1970s and 80s, and there is no reason to doubt his memory or his account of the experiences from which he drew the title. But the term is not a regionalism as has been claimed by many popular press accounts. The usage is widespread and reasonably common. If it seems unusual, it’s probably because it’s so usual that few take notice of it when it appears, and the prominence it is given by being used in the title makes people notice it for the first time.

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Sources:

“break,” “breaking ball,” The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, third edition, 2009, 134–35.

“break, v.” “break bad,” Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 1, 1994, 264–65.

“break, v.,” def. 39.c., Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989.

“break bad, v.,” Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2010.

Rothman, Lily, “Breaking Bad: What Does that Phrase Actually Mean?,” Time, 23 September 2013.