The worddisccan describe any round , unconditional object . The worddiskcan also describe any round , flat target . So what just are the rule that dictate when we choosediscoverdisk , and frailty versa ?
There ’s no respectable etymological backstory behind the note between the two terms : Diskanddiscboth come from the Latindiscus(in Greek , diskos ) . The old knownreferencesto the English version , dating back to the mid-17th century , are spelleddisk . The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language ( perGrammarphobia ) chalks this up to the common law set by standardized - iskwords already in the vocabulary , such aswhisk . But by the following C , some English speakers charm by the term ’s Latin herald had started opting fordisc , alternatively .
For the next couple hundred year , the only matter that might determine with any consistency whether you wrotediscordiskwas where you go : Americans favoreddisk , whilediscwas the spelling of choice in the UK . But even that was n’t a voiceless and fast principle ; and asMerriam - Webster points out , both spellings occasionally appear in a single schoolbook , as was the compositor’s case in Jones Quain ’s 1828 bookElements of Anatomy , Vol . 1 .
It ’s still a toss - up betweendiscanddiskfor many kinds of disc ( or saucer ) . Herniated I , for object lesson : It’sherniated diskto theMayo Clinic , butherniated discto theAmerican Association of Neurological Surgeons . In sure cases , though , one spelling is so much more coarse that you could go so far as to debate the other one legal injury . The music industriousness has useddiscmore frequently thandiskever since phonograph recording - mold record became popular in the belated 19th century , and modern music - relate set phrase likecompact discanddisc jockeygenerally stupefy to that rule . In technical school , however , engineers nominate magnetic data processor disksfloppy disks , and thekhas cleave for those solid disks and the disk drive where they ’re inserted ( even if today ’s kids have never in reality seen that process in action ) . And if you ’re describing a Frisbee , go withflying disc — notdisk .
Because there ’s no well-defined system of logic to explain these conventions — each was pretty much just a spelling movement that caught on — it ’s hard to remember which thing are discs and which are record . But Merriam - Webster does have a ready to hand trick to help : Compact record ( and pilot discs ) are circular , just like the letterc . Floppy disks are all lines and edges , just likek .
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