From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Oct 28 19:16:16 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from falcon.prod.itd.earthlink.net (falcon.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.74]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 80B4337B403; Sun, 28 Oct 2001 19:16:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from dialup-209.245.135.21.dial1.sanjose1.level3.net ([209.245.135.21] helo=mindspring.com) by falcon.prod.itd.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 15y2uL-0002UB-00; Sun, 28 Oct 2001 19:16:14 -0800 Message-ID: <3BDCCA30.14BF82C2@mindspring.com> Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 19:17:04 -0800 From: Terry Lambert Reply-To: tlambert2@mindspring.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Eric Melville Cc: Jasper O'Malley , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: offtopic: c questions References: <3BDB0680.E8714908@mindspring.com> <20011028120915.B8117@FreeBSD.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 Eric Melville wrote: > > > 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" Hence the joke... the derivation was from "Indian". See also "Laputa". -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message