WOTY -- "Great Firewall"

[Benjamin Barrett]

Wikipedia lists "great firewall" as a colloquialism in its article on the Golden Shield Project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project).

Golden Shield Project - 金盾工程 jīndùn gōngchéng
Great Firewall of China - 防火长城 fánghuǒ chángchéng

The last two characters in Great Firewall of China are "Great Wall" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%95%BF%E5%9F%8E).

Wikipedia says this censorship tool began development in 1998 and went into operation in 2003, which is after the 2001 citations. The article, though, lists a citation in "Wired" in 1997, so it seems there must have been a separate firewall project that is also referred to as the Great Firewall. The Wiki article says this censorship is managed at six Internet gateways.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

On Jan 23, 2014, at 12:21 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:

> Surely a term whose eponym adversely affected seven percent of the
> world's population deserves the honor.  What else could possibly
> result in 500,000,000 hits for up to eight hours?
>
> "Big Web Crash in China: Experts Suspect Great Firewall", by NICOLE
> PERLROTH, on-line at
> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/big-web-crash-in-china-experts-suspect-great-firewall/
> and in print with the headline "Great Firewall Likely at Fault in Web
> Crash" (A1, NY and NE editions).
>
> Another article, dated Jan. 22 (New World Style), by Amy Qin, on-line
> at the NYTimes web site.
>
> (Originated probably in 2000.  Two books in 2001; one refers to it as
> "what some in the cyberspace community called the Great Firewall of China".)
>
> Joel

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