Specialist Vocabulary
251prints information from a computer’, as in the case of computer printer,
impact printer, ink-jet printer, laser printer, line printer, etc. Likewise,
E.Mod.E. plotter (whose computer-specific sense is ‘a computer
peripheral device that draws straight lines between two coordinates’, as in
digital plotter, drum plotter, pen plotter, graph plotter, printer-plotter,
etc.) originally – at the end of the 16th century – denoted ‘one who makes a
plan or map, one who plots points on a map’ (see the OED).
A well-known computer hardware name whose sense depends on the
figurative conceptualization of a PROFESSION/OCCUPATION derives from
E.Mod.E monitor (which, in the mid-17th century expressed the sense of ‘a
student in a college, who has special duties assigned to him, especially that
of keeping order, and who may occasionally act as a teacher to a junior
class – see the OED). With respect to hardware, monitor denotes ‘a visual
display unit used to display the text or graphics generated by a computer’,
but the COMPUTER HARDWARE/SOFTWARE IS A WORKER metaphor is even
more evident when the term is used with respect to software
(synonymously to monitor program), carrying the sense of ‘a computer
program that allows basic commands to be entered to operate a system’, or
in such hardware-related terms as power monitor (‘a circuit that shuts off
the electricity supply if it is faulty or likely to damage the hardware
equipment’).
Another popular computer term is editor (‘software that allows the user
to select sections of a file and alter or delete them, as well as add new
information’), as in text editor, word editor, image editor, or, more
specialized, line editor (‘software in which only one line of a source
program can be edited at a time’). The literal predecessor of this specialist
term is its E.Mod.E. sense (which goes back to the early 18th-century, but
is still present in today’s English) of ‘one who prepares the literary work
of another person for publication, by selecting, revising, and arranging the
material; one who prepares an edition of any literary work’ (see the OED).
E.Mod.E. manager – whose earliest senses include ‘one who manages
something specified’ (in the 16th-century) and ‘one whose office it is to
manage a business establishment or a public institution’ (in the early 17th
century, as well as today) – has become an important term in computer
science, meaning ‘user-friendly front-end software that allows easy access
to the operating system commands’. An analogous figurative
conceptualization underlies file manager (‘a section of a disk operating
system that allocates disk space to files, keeping track of the file sections
and their sector addresses’), queue manager (‘software which orders tasks
waiting to be processed’), as well as record manager (‘a program that