Disk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jump to: navigation, search

A disk or disc (see below) is anything that resembles a flattened cylinder in shape. More specifically:

Disc or disk?

The divergence in spelling is due in part to the way in which the words originated. Disc came into the English language in the mid-17th century, from the Latin discus, and like already-existing words like whisc or risc, it was spelled with c; disk arose some time later, and was based on the original Greek root diskus. In the 19th century, disk became the conventional spelling for audio recordings made on a flat plate, such as the gramophone record; this usage gave rise to the modern term disk jockey. Early BBC technicians differentiated between discs (in-house transcription records) and disks (the colloquial term for commercial gramophone records, or what the BBC dubbed CGRs).

By the 20th century, the c-spelling was more popular in British English, while the k-spelling was preferred in American English. In the 1940s, when the American company IBM pioneered the first hard disk storage devices, the k-spelling was used. In 1979 the Dutch company Philips, along with Sony, developed the compact disc medium; here, the c-spelling was chosen, possibly because of the predominating British spelling, or because the compact disc was seen as a successor to the analogue disk record. Most likely it's because the spelling disc is acceptable to the French, just as Philips introduced the cassette in the 1960s under a French name, too.

Whatever their heritage, in computer jargon today it is common for the k-spelling to refer mainly to magnetic storage devices, while the c-spelling is customary for optical media such as the compact disc and similar technologies. Even in the computing field, however, the terms are used inconsistently; software documentation often uses the c-spelling exclusively.

Etymology: from Greek δίσκος, a flat round object athletes competed in throwing.  See discus throw.

See also

Look up disk on Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

External links

Personal tools