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November 20, 2009

Strange But True!

Q. “Suffix it to say” we live in a world where almost everyone is addicted to something, becoming maybe an alcoholic, chocaholic, foodaholic, or workaholic. What suffixes are best known by the techaholics among us?

A. Call them also webaholics (the Web), Twitterholics (Twitter), gameaholics (computer games in general), says Paul McFedries in “IEEE Spectrum” magazine. The suffix workhorse in these circles is “-ware,” short for software and spawning such classics as freeware (free software), shareware (software you can use before purchasing) and vaporware (announced but not delivered). Beerware you can get for the price of buying the developer a beer, terrorware is software used by terrorists, and wearware goes back a few years to an article about wearable computers.


 
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