When carbon means carbonless

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Mar 16 19:00:32 UTC 2007


>It's a case where the abbreviation has long been disassociated with the
>original meaning. It happened with photocopied cc'ed documents before moving
>into the electronic age.
>
>"Courtesy copy" is an oft-used re-interpretation of the abbreviation.
>
>
>>  At 3/15/2007 09:57 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>
>>LOL. Seriously, though, is the word "carbon (copy)" used for CCing
>  >with e-mail? I never use it that way. BB
>
We've also discussed an alternate reinterpretation, cc = copies (as
the plural of c), prompted by the fact that there are often > 1 at a
time (and that e.g. pp. = pages and so on).

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list