From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Oct 28 12: 9:17 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix, from userid 885) id BF3A837B401; Sun, 28 Oct 2001 12:09:15 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 12:09:15 -0800 From: Eric Melville To: Jasper O'Malley Cc: Terry Lambert , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: offtopic: c questions Message-ID: <20011028120915.B8117@FreeBSD.org> References: <3BDB0680.E8714908@mindspring.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from jooji@nickelkid.com on Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 12:41:31PM -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > I always figured it was just turning a noun into an adjective by slapping > an "-ian" onto the noun, so that computing architectures that use the "big > end" ordering are "bigendian." Other examples of the word construction are > "reptilian" (from "reptile") and "Jeffersonian" (from "Jefferson"). Apparently it stems from Jonathon Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", a story in which two groups of people are at war with each other because of the way they prefer to eat eggs[1]. One group, the Big Endians, prefers to eat the larger end of the egg first, while the Little Endians of course do the opposite. [1] See also "bikeshed" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message