To: "Vicky Risk via RT" References: Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 18:15:42 +0000 CC: Content-Disposition: inline X-RT-Incoming-Encryption: Not encrypted content-type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" From: "Evan Hunt" User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) Message-ID: <20170715181542.GB64927@isc.org> X-RT-Original-Encoding: utf-8 Received: from bikeshed.isc.org (bikeshed.isc.org [149.20.48.19]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "mail.isc.org", Issuer "RapidSSL CA" (not verified)) by bugs.isc.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8629AD78AE8 for ; Sat, 15 Jul 2017 18:15:43 +0000 (UTC) Received: by bikeshed.isc.org (Postfix, from userid 10292) id 31AC5216C1E; Sat, 15 Jul 2017 18:15:42 +0000 (UTC) Delivered-To: bind9-confidential@bugs.isc.org Subject: Re: [ISC-Bugs #45559] Modernize 'dig' acronym expansion From each@isc.org Sat Jul 15 18:15:43 2017 X-Original-To: bind9-confidential@bugs.isc.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-Path: In-Reply-To: X-RT-Interface: Email RT-Message-ID: Content-Length: 740 On Sat, Jul 15, 2017 at 04:01:26PM +0000, Vicky Risk via RT wrote: > I thought the G in DIG stood for ‘grepper’ as in to use the grep utility. > > Am I wrong? Jeremy is correct; it is documented as "groper". The first version of "dig" was written a long time ago, and while the word "grope" has taken on some new connotations in US English in the decades since then, I believe it was always intended in the dictionary sense of "feeling around blindly in the dark". I'm not particularly enthusiastic about revising history because what was at the time a slang usage has become commonplace, but Jeremy isn't the first person to complain about it, either. Maybe we just don't need to expand the abbreviation in the man page anymore.