#Word Stories: COMPUTER (en)
Using computers and other programmable devices are an integral part of our lives. If they weren’t, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article right now.
So is the word ‘COMPUTER’ itself. But where does it come from?
It can be traced back to Latin. The Latin verb ‘computo’ literally translates into English as ‘’I analyze, I think, I reflect”, or “I ponder”. It’s made up of two elements: COM + PUTO. Let’s have a closer look at each of them.
1. ‘Com’/’con’ is a prefix related to the Latin preposition ‘cum’ (=’with’) still in use in expressions like ‘cum laude’ (literally ‘with praise’). The prefix is present in a great number English and international words, like CONstruction, CONversion, COMpetition, etc. In most cases, it suggests the concept of common or simultaneous action. The prefix ‘co-’, as in CO-author or CO-director, has the same origin.
2. ‘Puto’ is Latin for ‘I reckon, I suppose’. Its second meaning is: ‘I prune, I cut’. It goes back to an ancient Proto-Indo-European root (*pau) which originally meant ‘to strike’. Later, it further evolved to metaphorically describe all kinds of cognitive and thinking processes. Its modern cognates include ‘putative’, as well as such words as reputation, repute, impute, etc.
An alternative theory suggests that ‘puto’ derives from Proto-Indo-European ‘*pewh’ (=‘cleanse’, ‘purify’). This is a very ancient root that spawned new words in various languages, cf. Sanskrit पूत (pūtá) and Latin ‘purus’ (= ‘clean, pure, unalloyed’).
Its derivatives in Modern English include ‘pure’ and ‘Puritan’. The latter came into use in the 16th century to describe members of the Church of England who sought to ‘purify’ religious practices of what they considered to be Roman Catholic influence. Just like most Latin terms, it was borrowed from French, a language that was basically the literary language of the British Isles for centuries had a huge impact on English after the Norman Conquest.
You may wonder, what does purity have to do with thinking? Actually, the idea behind this is that the process of thinking is about discovering the truth. As you keep reflecting on an issue, you get closer to the truth, getting rid of prejudice and misconceptions. Thus, you make your understanding of the matter ‘purer’.
The word ‘computist’ is attested as early as the late 14th century, while the word ‘computer’ was first introduced in the English language in 1613 by the poet Richard Brathwait. The verb ‘to compute’ in the sense ‘to determine, to eckon’ has been used since the 1630s. Apparently, the lexeme was also borrowed from Latin through French (cf. ‘compter’ = ‘count, calculate’). It is cognate with modern English ‘count’.
Let’s have a look at some examples:
Samuel Pepys, a British diarist and naval administrator, wrote of ‘computing 30 ship’s pay’ in 1660.
In the 18th century, the Edinburgh Weekly Journal (1731) recommended that young wives know their husbands’ income “and be so good a Computer as to keep within it.”
Later, in his ‘Address to the Unco Guid, or Rigidly Righteous’ (1786), Robert Burns wrote:
“What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.”
It may seem odd now, but in the 17th-19th centuries the word ‘computer’ described a person employed to perform calculations. So, the first computers very human. Female computers were referred to as ‘computresses’.
The first use of the word to describe a calculating machine goes back to a 1897 publication in the British monthly ‘Engineering’.
In 1945, the term ‘computer’ was used in the modern sense of a ‘programmable digital electronic device for performing mathematical or logical operations’. The device itself was first conceived and described by Alan Turing in 1937. The earliest ‘computer’ similar to the ones we use now, was introduced in 1946 under the name of ‘ENIAC’, which is an acronym for ‘electronic numeral integrator and computer’.
As you can see, the word ‘COMPUTER’, or at least its root, goes back entire millennia and predates not only present-day gadgets but even Modern English itself.
Further reading:
What’s the root of the word ‘Computer’? / BBC
