in reply to Why "arguments"?

latin: argumentum= argument, proof, (distinctive) mark
...... arguere= to enlighten, explain, prove
greek: argos= clear, shining white
indoeuropean: argy- : light, clear, shining

The arguments constitute a functions interface,its signature, it's "distinctive mark" -- somewhat like the "eyes" of the god Argos ("the clear eyed") in greek mythology, a herdsman whose eyes were always open && saw everything.
-- Allan Dystrup
=========================================================== As the eternal tranquility of Truth reveals itself to us, this very place is the Land of Lotuses
-- Hakuin Ekaku Zenji

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Re^2: Why "arguments"?
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 28, 2005 at 10:29 UTC
    "indoeuropean" is language ?
    i've never seen this used for ethymology .
    /puzzled.
[reply]
      Quote "MIGRATIONS AND CULTURAL DIFFUSION carried the Indo-European protolanguage from the homeland, which the authors place in the Transcaucasus( see Historical Armenia maps), and fragmented it into dialects. Some spread west to Anatolia and Greece, others southwest to Iran and India. Most Western languages stem from an Eastern branch that rounded the Caspian Sea. Contact with Semitic languages in Mesopotamia and with Kartvelian languages in the Caucasus led to the adoption of many foreign words." See also This

      You can consider it equivalent to Root in *nix :)
      allan
      ===========================================================
      As the eternal tranquility of Truth reveals itself to us, this very place is the Land of Lotuses
      -- Hakuin Ekaku Zenji
[reply]
        Actually, I was thinking of Indo-European as equivalent to C, which has fragmented into the many languages most of us use everyday.

        But that likening will lead to another set of strange thoughts, like Finnish being Lisp, French being Bliss, ending with Chinese as APL.

        Oh, and assembler as prehistoric. Ook!

[reply]

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