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Do you know there are phrases simply strolling round on the market ready to explode your day? Phrases that you simply thought you knew. Like wi-fi, for instance (opens in new tab). You thought you had a mutual understanding: you discovered the definition of the phrase, the way to spell and pronounce it, and in trade you may undergo life utilizing it with out learning all the historical past of language. An harmless life! That is how I lived as soon as. After which a portmanteau completely wrecked my shit.
A portmanteau, if you do not know, is the smooshing collectively of two phrases to make a brand new one. Like brunch. Or biopic. Or electronic mail. Apparent, proper? Effectively—till at this time, I had no concept what number of different phrases in tech are portmanteaus moderately than sturdy, unbiased creations imbued with their very own that means. The one that actually despatched me reeling was modem.
Deep breath. “Modem?” Faux phrase. It is only a modulator-demodulator. After all it’s. A modem’s complete job is to modulate an analog sign right into a digital one, after which demodulate it once more on the opposite finish.
How did I not know this? I would chalk this as much as an age factor, however I used to be utilizing modems in my teenagers when dial-up was nonetheless comparatively sizzling know-how. I suppose by then the portmanteau was so ingrained, no person was going round explaining how modems had been the brunch of the know-how world.
Besides, like, it turns on the market are so many brunches of the know-how world. There are portmanteaus in all places. It is a mimosa minefield on the market.
“Codec?” Not some cool phrase we plucked from the ether for communications and video codecs. Only a coder-decoder.
“Bit?” A binary digit. Whoever got here up with that one was actually stretching it, actually.
“Pixel?” One other portmanteau!! A pixel is an image aspect.
Curveball—do you know Sega’s title is a shortening of Service Video games of Japan? That is maybe probably the most surprising little bit of ineffective video games trivia I’ve discovered since realizing the pun in Miles “Tails” Prower.
Studying all these portmanteaus makes me wish to sit and stare off into area like TV’s Pablo Escobar (opens in new tab). They appear so apparent. How did I not know them? How do I’m going on utilizing know-how on a regular basis, when it might betray me at any second?
I suppose my solely recourse is to keep away from tech and retreat into the fantasy worlds of my favourite video games. Nothing in Dragon Age might presumably harm me, proper (opens in new tab)?
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