Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 12:09:15 -0800 From: Eric Melville <eric@FreeBSD.org> To: Jasper O'Malley <jooji@nickelkid.com> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: offtopic: c questions Message-ID: <20011028120915.B8117@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0110281232550.85366-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com>; from jooji@nickelkid.com on Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 12:41:31PM -0500 References: <3BDB0680.E8714908@mindspring.com> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0110281232550.85366-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com>
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> 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
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