The orator Cato ended his speeches with *Carthago delenda est* ("Carthage must be destroyed"). *Delere* is the infinitive form of the verb; I think *delenda* the present participle? I don't know much about Latin grammar.
Edit: it's the gerundive, or "future passive participle", with *est*, a form of *esse*, to be.
Yes. Then he started using the abbreviated form. I didn't want to get into yet more Latin grammar that I know very poorly and have to look up the proper form of.
The rubbed out a city, not a people. By modern standards, Carthage were the ultimate colonizers.
Rome tended to incorporate conquered people into their empire, not burn them to the ground. Carthage was an exception and the 2nd war indirectly ended the republic.
He also published a recipe for a layered cheesecake with an unfortunate name. https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/english/recipes/ancient-roman-placenta-honey-cheesecake/
They demolished it - the region became a Roman territory, but the city wasn't rebuilt until a century later.
But my "what if?" is about if it survived as an independent Mediterranean power. Heck, what if it actually conquered and absorbed *Rome?* What would the modern world look like, if that happened?
If I were more adept at history and sociology, I'd be plotting my multi-book Alternate Historical Epic this very moment. ;)
I knew it had latin roots from the term "deleatur", which is used in proofreading to mark something for deletion. "Dele" is apparently more common in American English, but I never heard about it in French.
A final -e in Latin on a verb indicates either an infinitive or an imperative (or a second person singular passive, but that's less common). *Delete* is actually the present plural imperative form of *deleo*.
DÄlÄre had two different vowels, long Ä and short e. In any case, āeā is by far the most common vowel letter in English, and one of the most common vowels in a lot of languages, so finding some words with three of them is hardly unexpected.
The dictionary definition says:
>remove orĀ obliterateĀ (written or printed matter), especially by drawing a line through it or marking it with a delete sign.
Sorry people are downvoting you, it had a similar meaning that applied to editing written works (although it meant more to strike something out rather than remove it entirely).Ā It also has applications in genetics, starting around the 1920s.
From the 1828 Websterās Dictionary:Ā
DELETE,Ā verb transitiveĀ To blot out.
And from the Oxford English Dictionary:Ā
The earliest known use of the verbĀ deleteĀ is in the Middle English period (1150ā1500).
OED's earliest evidence forĀ deleteĀ is from 1495, inĀ Trevisa's Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum
"delete" as a verb in English has been around long before computers, but primarily restricted to the context of writing and drawing (e.g. "delete this word from the sentence" or "delete this line from the sketch").
It was this sense which was adopted in computing, meaning more broadly "to remove stored data".
It is only recently that the word has been further broadened into more or less a synonym for "remove", probably influenced by young people's frequent exposure to the word in computing. It is gaining even further meaning by metaphorical extension, e.g. also serving as a synonym for "kill" (probably encouraged as a means to avoid automated censorship).
That makes me wonder if popular media has had an influence on the use of the word as a synonym for "kill", given that it's been used in that manner by the Cybermen in Doctor Who for nearly twenty years.
I suspect the usage in Doctor Who simply shares a source with the current usage, i.e. exposure to computer terminology. Doctor Who is certainly popular, but I donāt get the sense that enough people would know who the Cybermen are, let alone their catchphrase (āyou will be deletedā), for it to meaningfully impact youth lingo.
imo ādeleteā is a strong way to say ākillā because in terms of digital computers it means a complete and immediate erasure. Itās binary, either deleted or not with no in between. So if a person is deleted, the implication is that theyāre not just badly injured, they have no chance to survive, they are fully gone.
Look up kill ring and Emacs: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html\_node/emacs/Kill-Ring.html. That parlance was already in place 40+ years ago.
Given the medium where we are having this discussion, I suggest that the use of ākillā to mean āādelete' a region of text and yeet it into a background buffer organized as a ring of structures" bled into the popular culture of college nerds and from there, like other net-only parlance it made it to a subset of the population that had access to that culture. But, Iāve been embrangled into that culture since the 1970s, so my estimation of how the programmersā argot has affected popular language is skewed: āEvery man speaks of the fair as his own market has gone in itā āLaurence Sterne.
Due to the prevalence of the phrase "yeet into existence", yeet came to mean "create". Then, deyeet was coined and used to mean the opposite. j -> l in a meme-induced sound change and the spelling was changed for unknown reasons.
> _"late-early-modern-terminally-online-English"_
Gah!
Now, as a word nerd, I'm stuck wondering if "terminally online" here means "online, by means of a terminal", or "online, until dead".
The puns! š
[https://www.oed.com/dictionary/delete\_v](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/delete_v)
>**1495** Bartholomaeus Anglicus ā¢ De proprietatib\[us\] re\[rum\] ā¢ (translated by John Trevisa) Ā· 1st edition, 1495 (1 vol.).Ā iv.Ā iii. sig. evi^(v)/2
Drinesse dystroyeth bodyes Ć¾^(t)Ā haue soules, so he dyssoluyth &Ā delytethĀ \[*a*1398Ā *BL Add. 27944*Ā todeleĆ¾\]Ā the kynde naturall spyrytes Ć¾^(t)Ā ben of moyst smoke.
The earliest attested sense is quite strong, meaning to annihilate or eradicate something. The modern sense of removing something from written or printed material arose in the mid-16th century.
In the car community its overuse is gross. I canāt stand to hear it in reference to parts on a car ie: āI did a chrome delete on my carā or āI did the exhaust deleteā and many many other ādeletesā like cmon can we not just call it what it used to be? āI color matched/blacked out the chromeā or āI straight piped itā.
The orator Cato ended his speeches with *Carthago delenda est* ("Carthage must be destroyed"). *Delere* is the infinitive form of the verb; I think *delenda* the present participle? I don't know much about Latin grammar. Edit: it's the gerundive, or "future passive participle", with *est*, a form of *esse*, to be.
I think he said "By the way I think that..." plus an AcI, didn't he? "Ceterum censeo, Carthaginem esse delendam!"
Yes. Then he started using the abbreviated form. I didn't want to get into yet more Latin grammar that I know very poorly and have to look up the proper form of.
And then they did a [genocide](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-ancient-genocide-and-the-97698676/)
That summarises most of Roman foreign policy
Unfortunately it broadly summarizes a lot of foreign policy of the last 5,000 years
Carthage got cancelled
Non omnes Carthaginienses!
By the OG conservative shithead Cato.
Isn't the whole point of this thread kinda to say Carthage got "deleted"? š
SOP for many conflicts back in those days.
The rubbed out a city, not a people. By modern standards, Carthage were the ultimate colonizers. Rome tended to incorporate conquered people into their empire, not burn them to the ground. Carthage was an exception and the 2nd war indirectly ended the republic.
He also published a recipe for a layered cheesecake with an unfortunate name. https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/english/recipes/ancient-roman-placenta-honey-cheesecake/
[Max Miller](https://youtu.be/giPXpKy2lQ0?feature=shared) made it, very cool
Seems Martial's friend was playing him for a sucker. But then Martial was always complaining about something.
This particular construction I learned as the passive periphrastic Agenda is also a future passive participle of agere, something to be done
Makes sense.
The girl's name Miranda, to be wondered at or marveled at.
thanks for the education! I'm loving this stuff!
You might (loosely) translate it as "Carthage must be deleted!"
_"DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!"_ Now, where have I heard that before... š
Cato Minor delevit.
Verum.
Yeah, I read somewhere that a more literal translation with the gerundive grammar is something like āCarthage is a thing, which must be destroyedā
A literal translation would be "Carthage is to be destroyed".
So we know how Carthage would vote in this coolness contest.
Makes you wonder, what if Carthage had survived...? There's an interesting alternate history for some writer to play with!
It did survive after conquest, but as a Roman city.
They demolished it - the region became a Roman territory, but the city wasn't rebuilt until a century later. But my "what if?" is about if it survived as an independent Mediterranean power. Heck, what if it actually conquered and absorbed *Rome?* What would the modern world look like, if that happened? If I were more adept at history and sociology, I'd be plotting my multi-book Alternate Historical Epic this very moment. ;)
Delete comes from Latin delere (destroy), which may have roots going even farther back.
I knew it had latin roots from the term "deleatur", which is used in proofreading to mark something for deletion. "Dele" is apparently more common in American English, but I never heard about it in French.
Did it always mean the same thing before computers?
Someone just told you it meant "destroy" to romans
So wait, someone saying "I'm gunna delete u" is actually the older use of the word?
Apparently, yes!
Yeah, but what about the Romans' computers?
Their keyboard was the same. But where ours say ādeleteā theirs said āDESTROYā
Those Romans, always going hard on everything....
This convinced me. but why did they think the three eee's were so cool?
I have no idea how they pronounced it since I don't speak latin. Also words arent made up like that
I know, but its pretty cool no? Maybe i need to poke /r/AskHistorians with this one
You're very endearing, OP
haters ITT
GoshdarnGoshdarnbhutrosbhutrosgali I've been stunned since the 90's
What? The final -e is a quirk of the English orthography, not something the Romans did.
A final -e in Latin on a verb indicates either an infinitive or an imperative (or a second person singular passive, but that's less common). *Delete* is actually the present plural imperative form of *deleo*.
I am well aware of that, but that's unrelated to why there's an -e in the English word, it's to show vowel length.
DÄlÄre had two different vowels, long Ä and short e. In any case, āeā is by far the most common vowel letter in English, and one of the most common vowels in a lot of languages, so finding some words with three of them is hardly unexpected.
The dictionary definition says: >remove orĀ obliterateĀ (written or printed matter), especially by drawing a line through it or marking it with a delete sign.
Before delere it was "to wipe away"
elegant
Are you kidding? Do you think the words "write" and "insert" were created after computers, too?
āHey look - someone did a 3D print of the Save icon!ā
Just wait until they see "a small rodent that typically has a pointed snout, relatively large ears and eyes, and a long tail."
Sorry people are downvoting you, it had a similar meaning that applied to editing written works (although it meant more to strike something out rather than remove it entirely).Ā It also has applications in genetics, starting around the 1920s. From the 1828 Websterās Dictionary:Ā DELETE,Ā verb transitiveĀ To blot out. And from the Oxford English Dictionary:Ā The earliest known use of the verbĀ deleteĀ is in the Middle English period (1150ā1500). OED's earliest evidence forĀ deleteĀ is from 1495, inĀ Trevisa's Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum
Wow. Redditors are way too harsh on this comment.
"delete" as a verb in English has been around long before computers, but primarily restricted to the context of writing and drawing (e.g. "delete this word from the sentence" or "delete this line from the sketch"). It was this sense which was adopted in computing, meaning more broadly "to remove stored data". It is only recently that the word has been further broadened into more or less a synonym for "remove", probably influenced by young people's frequent exposure to the word in computing. It is gaining even further meaning by metaphorical extension, e.g. also serving as a synonym for "kill" (probably encouraged as a means to avoid automated censorship).
That makes me wonder if popular media has had an influence on the use of the word as a synonym for "kill", given that it's been used in that manner by the Cybermen in Doctor Who for nearly twenty years.
I suspect the usage in Doctor Who simply shares a source with the current usage, i.e. exposure to computer terminology. Doctor Who is certainly popular, but I donāt get the sense that enough people would know who the Cybermen are, let alone their catchphrase (āyou will be deletedā), for it to meaningfully impact youth lingo. imo ādeleteā is a strong way to say ākillā because in terms of digital computers it means a complete and immediate erasure. Itās binary, either deleted or not with no in between. So if a person is deleted, the implication is that theyāre not just badly injured, they have no chance to survive, they are fully gone.
True, but it's the effect on the popularity of the phrase I was wondering about.
Look up kill ring and Emacs: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html\_node/emacs/Kill-Ring.html. That parlance was already in place 40+ years ago.
I don't doubt it existed, I'm questioning whether it made it more popular.
Given the medium where we are having this discussion, I suggest that the use of ākillā to mean āādelete' a region of text and yeet it into a background buffer organized as a ring of structures" bled into the popular culture of college nerds and from there, like other net-only parlance it made it to a subset of the population that had access to that culture. But, Iāve been embrangled into that culture since the 1970s, so my estimation of how the programmersā argot has affected popular language is skewed: āEvery man speaks of the fair as his own market has gone in itā āLaurence Sterne.
I was wondering about the Cyberman influence as well.
Due to the prevalence of the phrase "yeet into existence", yeet came to mean "create". Then, deyeet was coined and used to mean the opposite. j -> l in a meme-induced sound change and the spelling was changed for unknown reasons.
Wow I had no idea.Ā I assume as part of the great meme shift of late-early-modern-terminally-online-English?
Yeah, that one
> _"late-early-modern-terminally-online-English"_ Gah! Now, as a word nerd, I'm stuck wondering if "terminally online" here means "online, by means of a terminal", or "online, until dead". The puns! š
I'm getting second hand embarrassment just reading this.
I think they're trolling rather than genuinely dumb.Ā
[https://www.oed.com/dictionary/delete\_v](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/delete_v) >**1495** Bartholomaeus Anglicus ā¢ De proprietatib\[us\] re\[rum\] ā¢ (translated by John Trevisa) Ā· 1st edition, 1495 (1 vol.).Ā iv.Ā iii. sig. evi^(v)/2 Drinesse dystroyeth bodyes Ć¾^(t)Ā haue soules, so he dyssoluyth &Ā delytethĀ \[*a*1398Ā *BL Add. 27944*Ā todeleĆ¾\]Ā the kynde naturall spyrytes Ć¾^(t)Ā ben of moyst smoke. The earliest attested sense is quite strong, meaning to annihilate or eradicate something. The modern sense of removing something from written or printed material arose in the mid-16th century.
Carthago **delenda** est. Very new, yeah! ;-)
As others have pointed out, "delete" is derived from the Latin delere, meaning "to destroy."
In the car community its overuse is gross. I canāt stand to hear it in reference to parts on a car ie: āI did a chrome delete on my carā or āI did the exhaust deleteā and many many other ādeletesā like cmon can we not just call it what it used to be? āI color matched/blacked out the chromeā or āI straight piped itā.
Origin of [delete^(1)](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/delete) 1485ā95; < *Latin dÄlÄtus* (past participle of *dÄlÄre* to destroy), equivalent to *dÄl-* destroy + *-Ä-* thematic vowel + *-tus* past participle suffix [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/delete](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/delete)