Was a juror on a criminal case deciding this very charge, digital insertion. Mark is right and Dragos is wrong: have you heard of digital insertion? Recently I I guess if one is barefootin’, a digit can be any number below 20 LOL. Podiatrists refer to the toes as digits, so there is a big (great) toe and 4 digits on each foot. Also, a surgeon might well use “digital maneuvers” or “digital dissection” (i.e., use the hands/fingers) to separate tissues or organs, instead of risking slicing through something by using a scalpel (knife, blade, scissors, cautery, etc). So although it’s somewhat more “lay,” there are people who do refer to the fingers (digits) by their better-known names, i.e., thumb, forefinger (pointer), middle (long) finger, ring finger and pinky (pinkie, little finger, fifth finger). Unfortunately, this is confusing to people who believe the thumb to be a digit (which, IMHO, it is). The 4 fingers are sometimes referred to as the first through 4th digits. Technically, we have a thumb and 4 fingers on each hand this is equal to 5 digits. In the medical field, digital definitely refers to fingers, and to toes as well. I didn’t know the origin of the word “bit.” If I had been the wordmeister, I’d have called it a bidi, a bindi, maybe a bindit I beg to differ. It is true that digits true that digits refers to fingers as you can show any digit with your fingers but this doesn’t make digital a term related to fingers.Īhh, I learn something every day. Digital didn’t referred to fingers but to digits. One little remark, I hope you don’t mind. Isn’t it the use of zeros and ones that is the basis of the on-off duality of binary computer systems? “The use of zeros and tens as the basis of the on-off duality of binary computer systems led the technology to be referred to as digital technology.” Yes, but only of magic as sleight of hand. ‘prestidigitation, a sesquipedalian synonym for magic’. data in which the difference between two adjacent points is infinitely small, and “digital” refers to discrete data, in which adjacent data points, though they may be very small, are separate entities. In this use, “Analog” refers to continuous data, i.e. Digital” tip, you don’t discuss the use of the words in technical writing to differentiate between types of data. Difference between "Pressing" and "Ironing".Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below: Prestidigitation, meanwhile, is another Latin-looking invention influenced by prestige, which comes from the Latin word praestigiae, “juggler’s tricks.” ( Prestige acquired a laudatory meaning and connotation only in the early twentieth century.) It’s a combination of the Italian word presto and digit - hence, “quick fingers.”Īnalog, meanwhile, calls to mind its full-form predecessor analogue (which spelling for the adjectival form is also preferred in British English), which means “something similar.” An analogy is also a similarity, or it can refer to a correspondence or to another form of comparison. Two other terms with the same root word are digitalis, referring to a plant popularly known as the foxglove and to a medicine extracted from it, and prestidigitation, a sesquipedalian synonym for magic.ĭigitalis is a Latinized form of the German word fingerhut (“thimble”), because of the resemblance of the plant’s flowers to the sewing implement. The adjective digital now refers both to something done or having to do with fingers (for example, “digital manipulation”) and something related to digitally rendered numbers, or to computerized data or to electronics. Indeed, the word bit, referring to the basic unit of digital information, is a contraction of the phrase “binary digit.” Ironically, however, digit stems from the Latin term digitus, meaning “finger” or “toe.” The path from appendages to algorithms involves the use of fingers to count, thus the extension of the definition of digit to “number below ten.” The use of zeros and tens as the basis of the on-off duality of binary computer systems led the technology to be referred to as digital technology. What’s the difference between analog and digital, and why is the latter word, which originally referred to fingers, now the antithesis of “hands-on”?Īn analog is something related to physical quantities (hence the name analog comes from a Greek word meaning “proportion”): An analog clock, for example, shows the passage of time by measuring it with a “hand” that pivots on a central axis, while a measuring tape represents the length of a tangible phenomenon such as a room’s dimensions.īy contrast, digital refers to a device’s reading of binary units, zeros and ones, to perform functions and to the storage of information as binary units rather than an analog recording medium such as magnetic ribbon.