2022-02-08
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – D - disc & disk
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Dictionary.com:
ออกเสียง disc & disk = “DISK”
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:
disc & disk
The words are spelled differently, but mean the same thing:
“a thin, flat, circular plate or object.”
One refers to a “discus thrower”
but may call a person who conducts a broadcast consisting
of recorded music a “disc jockey” or a “disk jockey.”
Common Errors in English Usage Dictionary:
disc & disk
“Compact disc” is spelled with a “C”
because that’s how its inventors decided it should be rendered;
but a computer disk is spelled with a “K”
(unless it’s a CD-ROM, of course).
The New York Times insisted for many years
on the spelling “compact disk” in its editorial pages,
often incongruously next to ads containing the patented spelling “disc”;
but now even it has given in.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Usage Notes
‘Disc’ and ‘Disk’: Is There a Difference?
Or, why you shouldn’t toss a floppy like a Frisbee.
What to Know
Although disc and disk are listed as variants
for something round and flat in shape,
each one seems to have a preferred usage.
Disc is seen more often in the music industry and throwable objects
such as Frisbees,
whereas disk is the preferred spelling in computer-related lingo
such as floppy disk.
In the dictionary,
disk and disc are shown as variant nouns separated by or,
which means that they occur with more or less equal frequency
in edited text.
But there are some instances
where one spelling is applied more often than the other.
Origins of 'Disc' and 'Disk'
To start from the beginning:
the word derives from the Latin noun discus,
which means “quoit, disk, dish.”
The Greeks spelled this word as diskos, deriving it from the verb dikein
(“to throw”).
The diskos was a round, flat object
that Greek athletes would throw for distance during the ancient Olympics,
a sporting tradition that continues in the modern Olympics
with the spelling discus.
The discus became a useful item of comparison
for anything having a round, flat shape being called a disc or disk.
But initially there was no consensus among English speakers
on whether to use the Latin-derived spelling (with the c)
or the Greek-derived spelling (with the k).
The word found use as a descriptive word
for round heavenly bodies as viewed from the earth,
as well as for objects of similar shape occurring in nature (as in the body).
The modern phonograph, an invention credited to Thomas Edison in 1877, originally used waxed cylinders,
but the flat “gramophone” discs we use today were introduced by
Emile Berliner and were in regular use by the turn of the century.
Disc record briefly served as terminology
in advertising that distinguished the flat records from cylinders.
Preferences between 'Disc' and 'Disk'
The recording industry showed preference for the spelling disc
throughout the 20th century, though disk showed some use,
and by the 1940s, disc jockey and disk jockey followed analogously.
French adopted disc for phonograph records to create
its word for a music club, discotheque (originally a “disc library,”
following the French word for “library,” bibliotheque).
We shortened discotheque to disco,
and the 70s music craze known as disco came about from that.
The discrepancy between disc and disk
turned up in other areas of popular culture.
When the crash of a U.S. military weather balloon fed speculation
about flying saucers near Roswell, New Mexico,
the local media did not settle on one spelling
to describe the object that landed in one rancher’s yard.
“No Details of Flying Disk Are Revealed”
read a subheadline on the front page of the July 8, 1947
edition of the Roswell Daily Record,
while the Carlsbad Daily Current-Argus (July 9, 1947)
went with “’Flying Disc’ Turns Out to Be Weather Balloon.”
In the 1950s, Wham-O marketed the Frisbee,
whose shape alluded to the flying saucers of Roswell
and science-fiction films;
flying disc became one preferred generic term for the toy
(as in the name of the World Flying Disc Federation),
which is today used in games such as disc golf.
The introduction of the home personal computer
might have helped to introduce a separation
between disc and disk in the public consciousness.
The recording industry continued to show preference
for the spelling disc when compact discs were introduced
as a new digital recording format.
Like LP records, compact discs were still round,
which might have encouraged the spelling.
Magnetic computer disks, however,
tended toward the spelling disk, as in floppy disk.
The floppy disk is placed in a disk drive
and eventually gave way to what were called diskettes
—contained in a hard plastic case, not as floppy,
and usually about 3 and a half inches in width.
Both were square
—and even though both are pretty much a thing of the past,
notice that the save icon in many programs still resembles a square disk.
(The CD-ROM, modeled on the audio compact disc,
is an exception to the spelling pattern.)
There is still a great deal of variation across the board,
but it interesting that disc
—the spelling variant that ends in the round letter
—seems to be preferred for the round objects that play music
while disk seems to be the choice for the square computer device.
