Raticus79 (u/Raticus79)

magicinky · 2 years ago

Agree. For those not familiar with Rich's famous use of etymology, see his 2011 presentation "Simple made Easy" as a good example: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

Side question: Rich seems to use etymology as a tool for original thinking and clear explanations. Are there other people who do this as well as he does?

Raticus79 · 2 years ago

I use etymonline for this kind of thing often. Our complex words are compositions of lots of forgotten meaning... I find it helps to retrace those steps.

e.g. https://www.etymonline.com/word/system - see how it's about composition, not so much about ways of doing things.