21 lines
3.1 KiB
HTML
21 lines
3.1 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>hexadecimal</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../H.html" title="H"/><link rel="previous" href="hex.html" title="hex"/><link rel="next" href="hexit.html" title="hexit"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">hexadecimal</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="hex.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">H</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="hexit.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="hexadecimal"/><dt xmlns="" id="hexadecimal"><b>hexadecimal</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> Base 16. Coined in the early 1950s to replace earlier <span class="firstterm">sexadecimal</span>, which was too racy and amusing for
|
||
stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry.</p></dd><dd><p>Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take <span class="firstterm">binary</span> to be paradigmatic, the most
|
||
etymologically correct term for base 10, for example, is
|
||
‘denary’, which comes from ‘deni’ (ten at a time,
|
||
ten each), a Latin <span class="firstterm">distributive</span>
|
||
number; the corresponding term for base-16 would be something like
|
||
‘sendenary’. “<span class="quote">Decimal</span>” comes from the combining
|
||
root of <span class="firstterm">decem</span>, Latin for 10. If wish
|
||
to create a truly analogous word for base 16, we should start with
|
||
<span class="firstterm">sedecim</span>, Latin for 16. Ergo,
|
||
<span class="firstterm">sedecimal</span> is the word that would have
|
||
been created by a Latin scholar. The ‘sexa-’ prefix is Latin
|
||
but incorrect in this context, and
|
||
<i class="wordasword">‘hexa-</i>’ is Greek. The word <span class="firstterm">octal</span> is similarly incorrect; a correct form
|
||
would be ‘octaval’ (to go with decimal), or
|
||
‘octonary’ (to go with binary). If anyone ever implements a
|
||
base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced with the unprecedented
|
||
dilemma of a choice between two <span class="emphasis"><em>correct</em></span> forms; both
|
||
<span class="firstterm">ternary</span> and <span class="firstterm">trinary</span> have a claim to this throne.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="hex.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../H.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="hexit.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">hex </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> hexit</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
|