Questions for English Majors

[Henry Spencer]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
>       ...It's possible that diskette was then shortened to disk.

Uh, no.  Disk drives were disk drives (generally not disc drives, at least
not in North America) on computers in the 1950s, long before anyone had
heard of diskettes.  "Diskette" came from "disk", not vice-versa. 

My 1975 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary lists disc as "variant of disk".

The original Greek word was diskos (yes, with a K -- the Greek letter kappa).
It was Latin that introduced the C form.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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