🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7509@sbcs.sunysb.edu>,
sanjiva@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Sanjiva Prasad) writes:
>
>Some time ago Richard O'Keefe had asked some questions about 
>the first usages of certain commonly used terms. [...] it is worthwhile 
>to compile a "computer science jargon vocabulary/lexicon",

>1) COMPILER: 

According to my Merriam Webster New Collegiate:

    "compile": from Latin "compilare": "to plunder".
    1: "to collect into a volume"; 
    2: "to compose out of materials from other documents".

Although it's too late now, I'm convinced that 
"compiler" would be more appropriately applied to what is often today
called a "loader" or "linkage editor" -- at least that would be closest
to the word's long-standing meaning for literature.
Consider: "a compilation of essays".

Incidentally, my _Cassell's New Compact Latin Dictionary_ does not contain
an entry for "compilare", nor the likely 1st-person singular present-tense:
"compilo".  Cassell's does not cover postclassical (i.e.: later than 100 AD)
Latin.  The classical and similar-sounding "compellare": "to reproach, 
rebuke [, or legal:] "to accuse before a court" may well have presaged 
the diagnostic style of some modern-day compilers :-).
-- 
[The foregoing may or may not represent the position, if any, of my employer, ]
[ who is identified solely to allow the reader to account for personal biases.]
                                              
Clay Phipps 
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