Re: "Prepend" doesn't mean what you think it means

[jcast at cate2-108 dot reshall dot ou dot edu]

Clarke Echols <clarke@verinet.net> raved on Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:35:08 MDT:

> There is a word, invented at AT&T decades ago, that now pervades the
> Unix world that is _WRONG_ and needs to be stamped out in the
> interest of preserving the "mother tongue"!

FYI, English is not some ISO standard, locked up out of mere mortals'
reach.  English is a very open (copyleft) /collection/ of standards.
The "mother tongue" is, in fact, the 1,000 year old Anglo-Saxon, which
nobody speaks any more.  English is the mother tongue adulterated with
every other language in western Europe and quite a few languages that
aren't in western Europe.

Hackish English is even worse--it's English adulterated with nearly
every despicable invention you can think of.  If you don't believe me,
just browse through the Jargon File and see how many entries you can
count that need to be thrown out in the name of the "mother tongue".
(By the way, for Americans at least, your punctuation--`"mother
tongue"!'--is in violation of the rules of the "mother tongue".  I
hope you're British, for your own sake.  (Of course, that means you
speak a different language than most people at AT&T anyway.))

So, if `prepend' is not standard English, then it's jargon--and you
should start a campaign to get it in the jargon file or some other
appropriate resource.  Trying to get hackers to stop using jargon,
though, is like trying to get fish to stop using gills.  It ain't
gonna happen.

Jon Cast

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