More times that I can count I start thinking about things that are just silly. Yesterdays weirdness was regarding the word “click”. Click here, click now, click to save, click to launch, click to run, click to win, CLICK THIS! . As language and humans evolve together we often end up with a highly uninspired word representing something hard to define.
“What should we cal it when you interact with the computer by pushing the button down on the mouse to activate an element on the screen?”
“I dunno”
“Well what is sounds like?”
“kind of like… tap, cluck or poink or click”
I doubt that the real conversation was much different than that. At least the mouse itself got a cool name, and not “swishy magical oval”. And since the thing is called a “mouse” shouldn’t the action that the mouse does relate to it? Real mice don’t click, and if they do they wouldn’t brag about it. But I guess no one wanted to use “chew”, or “gnaw” or “make people scream” so they chose click instead.