Tech-word origins: stranger than science | csmonitor.com

I love the Internet. Let's just put that on the table. I love the intertext I can create between the news stories I read on the Christian Science Monitor's website and my Facebook Page. (Or between...well, anything and my FaceBook page, really. I'm surprised no one else I know uses this functionality more.)I love that with the click of my mouse, I can send a recipe to my sister for her to look over. And now I've found a new functionality that I'm pretty psyched about -- any page with a ShareThis logo can now be posted to Blogger in link form!

Tech-word origins: stranger than science | csmonitor.com
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People who read this blog on a regular basis know that I'm really getting into etymology, the study of where words come from. I wrote a term paper about fanfiction etymology, one of my favorite authors routinely borrows words from other languages in his work, and I even went so far as to write an entire fanfic based ariound the linguistic origin of the word checkmate. I am in so deep I have the OED on my bookmarks bar!

So it should come as no surprise that I looked at this article and immediately went "Wow, I should read that!!" But really, works like this do spark my interest, both because I like to learn where certain words come from and because I read science fiction. It's incredible to think that some of the words we use every day were once just a phrase someone made up to fill a void in a story or a conversation.

Like, for instance, this one:

Internet, n. -- [Shortened <INTERNETWORK n., perhaps influenced by similar words in -net (as Catenet (1972), Satnet (1973), Telenet (1973), etc.) after ARPAnet (a wide area network developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, attested from 1971). In subsequent use denoting the global network, probably greatly reinforced by use in the compound Internet Protocol.

Originally (in form internet): a computer network consisting of or connecting a number of smaller networks, such as two or more local area networks connected by a shared communications protocol; spec. such a network (called ARPAnet) operated by the U.S. Defense Department. In later use (usu. the Internet): the global computer network (which evolved out of ARPAnet) providing a variety of information and communication facilities to its users, and consisting of a loose confederation of interconnected networks which use standardized communication protocols; (also) the information available on this network.

(Internet etymolgy courtesy of the OED Online -- no copyright infringement intended.)