24 Aug
2004
24 Aug
'04
3:36 a.m.
Rumor has it that Jules Richardson may have mentioned these words:
On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 22:46, Tony Duell wrote:
Well, at www.miriamwebster.com, I typed in weldor and got:
One entry found for welder.
Main Entry: weld?er
Pronunciation: 'wel-d&r
Function: noun
: one that welds : as a or wel?dor : one whose work is welding b : a
machine used in welding
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When I searched for "computor" it didn't actually register anything, but
gave me a list of possible alternates, which included:
cor?rupt?er also cor?rup?tor /-'r&p-t&r/ noun
[[ altho in the list, it was corruptor, not corrupter, that was listed ]]
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But, alas, no Computor, from what I saw at that one website. I do know that
I've seen it in the distant past (i.e. high school, 20 years ago), but if
computers came in about the same time that the -or version of spelling was
on it's way out, I can see why it didn't gain "universal acceptance."
;-)
They want $30USD annually to use MiriamWebsterUnabridged.com, so I didn't
check there... ;-)
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | JC: "Like those people in
Celeronville!"
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Me: "Don't you mean Silicon Valley???"
zmerch(a)30below.com | JC: "Yea, that's the place!"
| JC == Jeremy Christian
I've just checked the Shorter Oxford
Dictionary (this is a 2-volume
English dictionary, mine is somewhat old). It doesn't contain Computor or
Weldor at all. A 'Welder' is one who welds, a Computer is a person who
calculates.
I always thought it came about with the arrival of the comptometer - a
computer being the person who operates the device. I've never come
across computor before, but as Tony says maybe it was different on the
other side of the pond...