Why are routers called rowters and not rooters?

In the UK the computer box is a 'Rooter' and the thing for working wood is a Router even thoug hthey are both the same spelling.

IF you are driving from place to place it is also planning a 'root'
 
arthwollipot said:
In Australia, you never hear anyone say "rooter". Or if they do, there are invariably sniggers. However, route as in road is almost always pronounced "root".
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I remember as a kid being filled with admiration at the thought of a highway called Route 66, and coming to the conclusion that Americans had an obsession with doing eveything in a big way- and probably that the country had a great many chiropractors.
Even if it were pronounced ""root"" it would probably slip very quickly into common usage without raising a collective aussie eyebrow..after all, kids talk about their Wi without a snigger, and dongle and hard-drive go unremarked, as did 5" floppy :)
 
Reason there are so many examples of varied pronunciation in English is the ongoing Great Vowel Shift. For those speaking more "shifted" regional dialects, the /au/ sound in "rawter" is normal, while others retain the older /u/ sound of "root." Whoever coined the term router probably spoke with a fully shifted vowel.

The wiki link describes the time of greatest or speediest change, but one can find traces of the shift still ongoing today.

Love the history of English. Studied it a long time ago (decades), but I still have a few beek* on the subject lying around.

---
*OE: books
 
clearwater said:
Even if it were pronounced ""root"" it would probably slip very quickly into common usage without raising a collective aussie eyebrow..after all, kids talk about their Wi without a snigger, and dongle and hard-drive go unremarked, as did 5" floppy :)
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Routers have been around at least as long as those have, and trust me, the Wii, dongles and floppies did not go unremarked.
 
I'm just going to say it: the word "rooter" sounds like a weird form of German porn where only the fish survives. No way could something like that be so intimately associated with the internet...........waitaminute!
 
arthwollipot said:
Routers have been around at least as long as those have, and trust me, the Wii, dongles and floppies did not go unremarked.
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What you seem to be saying is that the problem is not that 'root' is homophonous with an Australian slang word, but that Australians are in some way more juvenile than the rest of the world. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
 
Rat said:
What you seem to be saying is that the problem is not that 'root' is homophonous with an Australian slang word, but that Australians are in some way more juvenile than the rest of the world. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
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I think that may well be exactly what I'm saying.
 
Rat said:
What you seem to be saying is that the problem is not that 'root' is homophonous with an Australian slang word, but that Australians are in some way more juvenile than the rest of the world. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
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"Dongle" is pretty much guaranteed to get a chuckle (or leer) from somebody in any group. Especially since its usage in a computer context seems to be becoming archaic. (A development for which I am profoundly grateful. When those damned things were the solution du jour for copy protection I loathed the very sight of them, not to mention their demon-inspired side effects. )
 
quadraginta said:
"Dongle" is pretty much guaranteed to get a chuckle (or leer) from somebody in any group. Especially since its usage in a computer context seems to be becoming archaic. (A development for which I am profoundly grateful. When those damned things were the solution du jour for copy protection I loathed the very sight of them, not to mention their demon-inspired side effects. )
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These days, USB wireless internet devices are being referred to as dongles.
 
quadraginta said:
"Dongle" is pretty much guaranteed to get a chuckle (or leer) from somebody in any group. Especially since its usage in a computer context seems to be becoming archaic. (A development for which I am profoundly grateful. When those damned things were the solution du jour for copy protection I loathed the very sight of them, not to mention their demon-inspired side effects. )
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When they were still the solution du jour it wasn't a problem. But I think it was AutoCAD that used them, so we had lots, then they started using normal software licences, but we couldn't throw the dongles away because they proved the legitimacy of our upgrade paths, so we had a huge cupboard full of dongles that we had to keep. Still find one every now and then, often somewhere quite unexpected.
 
Rat said:
When they were still the solution du jour it wasn't a problem. But I think it was AutoCAD that used them, so we had lots, then they started using normal software licences, but we couldn't throw the dongles away because they proved the legitimacy of our upgrade paths, so we had a huge cupboard full of dongles that we had to keep. Still find one every now and then, often somewhere quite unexpected.
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That's what SHE said. :D
 
arthwollipot said:
These days, USB wireless internet devices are being referred to as dongles.
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Something similar to that is what prompted me to comment.

I have a Bluetooth transmitter which I use with a set of Bluetooth stereo headphones to adapt non-Bluetooth devices. Looks like this.


3182pMVvHbL._AA300_.jpg


I mentioned it in a group of about a half dozen people of varied ages and backgrounds a few weeks ago and referred to it as a dongle (without thinking, for lack of a better term.) The only one who didn't respond with a chuckle or leer was another (:blush:) over-the-hill technogeek. :p

I think that so many of the current devices are coming with wireless connectivity on-board that even adapters are getting to be somewhat old school.

The gizmo that adds Bluetooth to my ancient R51 Thinkpad doesn't even rate the term "dongle". It's more of a "bump".

41aFx7Tuw5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg
 
Rat said:
When they were still the solution du jour it wasn't a problem. But I think it was AutoCAD that used them, so we had lots, then they started using normal software licences, but we couldn't throw the dongles away because they proved the legitimacy of our upgrade paths, so we had a huge cupboard full of dongles that we had to keep. Still find one every now and then, often somewhere quite unexpected.
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It was when you had a handful of them daisy-chained out of your parallel port. And when they didn't get along with your printer software (or each other. :mad:).

220px-Parallel-port-dongle.jpg


That sort of thing can get ridiculous real quick. The first one is a nuisance. The second a PITA. After that it inspires hatred for copy protection schemes in general, and dongles in particular.

ETA: It just occurred to me that even knowing what a parallel port is will soon be a mark of an over-the-hill technogeek. :o
 
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arthwollipot said:
Ha! I come from the days of Centronix ports.
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I expect we're talking about the same thing. Even the DB25 pin-out on the original IBM PC parallel port was a Centronics parallel interface connection, with the 36 pin connector on the other end of the cable to the printer. There wasn't an IEEE standard to replace Centronics until the mid-90s.
 
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quadraginta said:
I expect we're talking about the same thing. Even the DB25 pin-out on the original IBM PC parallel port was a Centronics parallel interface connection, with the 36 pin connector on the other end of the cable to the printer. There wasn't an IEEE standard to replace Centronics until the mid-90s.
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Yes. I'd misremembered it spelled with an x, I think. 1995 was still the era of config.sys and autoexec.bat, until Windows 95 changed everything.
 
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