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Halloween

  • Dave Wilton

Dave Wilton

24 Oct 2023 • 4 min read
Halloween
A Halloween jack o’ lantern

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A Black woman standing in front of an electronic, mainframe computer

computer / compute

Computer has a rather straightforward etymology, although its original meaning may be a bit surprising. The word was originally applied to people, not machines. And in the modern era before the advent of electronic computers, many of these human computers were women, as calculation was considered mundane and repetitive work,
14 Nov 2025 5 min read
Revision of an old entry that was topical when originally written
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prorogation / prorogue (paid)

14 Nov 2025 3 min read
Stylized image of a 1940s newspaper newsroom with the words “Wordorigins.org: Words in the News
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6-7 / six-seven

13 Nov 2025 2 min read
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