Re: Backend is not a word

[Didier Verna <didier@lrde.epita.fr>]

ShengHuo ZHU wrote:

> "Backend" is not a word.  RMS suggests to use "back end", while
> "back-end" is found in FOLDOC.  What should we write?  Opinions?

 ,----
| From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English [gcide]:
| 
|   Word \Word\, n. [AS. word; akin to OFries. & OS. word, D. woord,
|      G. wort, Icel. or[eth], Sw. & Dan. ord, Goth. wa['u]rd,
|      OPruss. wirds, Lith. vardas a name, L. verbum a word; or
|      perhaps to Gr. "rh`twr an orator. Cf. {Verb}.]
|      [1913 Webster]
|      1. The spoken sign of a conception or an idea; an articulate
|         or vocal sound, or a combination of articulate and vocal
|         sounds, uttered by the human voice, and by custom
|         expressing an idea or ideas; a single component part of
|         human speech or language; a constituent part of a
|         sentence; a term; a vocable. ``A glutton of words.''
|         --Piers Plowman.
|         [1913 Webster]
`-----

        "backend" is very much of a written form of a "spoken sign of a
conception or an idea" to me. Whether or not specific to gnus, the fact that
it does not appear in dictionaries doesn't imply that this is not a word. Many
words do not appear in dictionaries, especially in the scientific domain.

        I don't think there's a really clean definition of the term "backend"
anywhere in the texi (it appears almost as a synonym of "method" in the first
node), but we all know what it means. Let's not be over-pedantic.

-- 
Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 53 14 59 47
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