Date: 30 Nov 2001 13:30:35 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: fcash@bigfoot.com Cc: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <14n114q744.114@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <3C06C0E7.25821.B47933@localhost> References: <3C06C0E7.25821.B47933@localhost>
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> > Ergonomics is shorthand for "ease of use." > > Have a gander at: > http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=ergonomics > > Note the complete, and utter, lack of "ease of use" on that page. > Ergonomics has to do with the study of equipment design to minimise > operator fatigue and injury. Anthony's got it close enough for me. I don't remember whether he used it perfectly, but everyone knows that ergonomics is related to ease of use, no matter what any dictionary might say. (And that page is compatible with "ease of use", even if it doesn't use those words.) The stem "ergon" comes from Greek "ergon" which means "work". The suffix "nomic" comes from Greek "nomos" which means "managing". So "ergonomic" should mean something like "pertaining to work management". So "ergonomics" should mean something like "study/science of work management". So "ergonomical" should mean something like "pertaining to Ergonomics", but since that's covered well enough by "ergonomic" it's morphed into meaning "managed to reduce work" or just "ergonomic" or even not used. Of course, many people are too lazy to determine when to add "s" or "al" (or even worse, "ly") with this and many other words, so the suffix is commonly wrongly added or wrongly omitted. The context almost always makes the meaning clear, so only semanticists care. And it is a near-universal assumption that "work management" here is concerned only with work reduction or improvements in efficiency. And that work reduction/efficiency can be either to make workers more productive or to make their jobs easier and/or safer, though the latter is more common in our Worker's Paridise. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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