Say It in German: Command Line

posted in: German, German Vocabulary, Informatik | 0

die Kommandozeile - command line

IPA: [kɔˈmando|ˈtsaɪ̯lə]

die Kommandozeile (pl. -n) – the command line / the command line interface

It’s another transparent word, made up of Kommando (“command”) and‎ Zeile (“line”).

I’ve decided that for some of these words, it’s way more fun to find out their origins.

So, let’s dig into the etymology of the words here again.

I’m using Duden, the Dizionario Etimologico, and Wiktionary as references.

Kommando comes from the Italian comando, from comandare.

This comes from Latin’s commendare.

The mendare part bears the meanings of “to order”, “to entrust”, “to commit”, or “to join”, among a few others.

The com means “with” (“con” in Italian), but in this case, it is added as a prefix to add intensity to the meaning of the other half of the word.

Zeile comes from the Middle High German zīle, is probably related to time (“Zeit”), and means some sort of divided line, row, or column (“Reihe”).

And Reihe? It comes from the Middle High German verb rīhen, from Old High German rīhan, and it means “to pull on a thread”.

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