Define - /etc?

ogar572 asks: "There has been an ongoing and heated debate around the office concerning the definition of what /etc means on *nix operating systems. One side says "et cetera" per Wikipedia. Another side says it means 'extended tool chest' per this gnome mailing list entry or per this Norwegian article. Yet another side says neither, but he doesn't remember exactly what he heard in the past. All he remembers is that he was flamed when he called it 'et cetera', but that 'extended tool chest' didn't sound right either. So, what does it really mean?"

Comments

Let's be logical shall we

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

- The C must mean "configuration" obviously
- There's a high chance the T means "tool"
- The E, I don't know, but surely it means something to do with system-wide

Re:I vote for et cetera

[indigo78]

Doesn't "/var" stand for "variable data", meaning things that change during time, so that if you put them there you can mount other directories (e.g. /usr, Unix System Resorces, read-only)? Or did I miss something? Anyway, no clue about what /etc stands for!

Re:Pronunciation?

[fmobus]

According do wikitionary, it's pronounced "et setera" (of course, this is the anglicized pronunciation). Anyway, I believe the Latin pronunciation was the same, for it is the same in my language too (Portuguese - one of the Vulgar Latin descendants). I'm not sure about French, Spanish and Italian, but they should provide a good clue for the original pronunciation.

As for your "Greek-to-Latin" method, I guess this is a bad example. We know "Caesar" sounded like current-German "Kaiser", but this doesn't mean all Latin "C" sounds like "K". I think it depended on the next vowel, as it does in most current romance languages: "ca", "co" and "cu" sound like "kah", "kow" and "koo", respectively; "ce" and "ci" sound like "se" and "see". Therefore, "et cetera" (it wasn't spelled "et cætera" as you propose), would sound like "et setera", not "et ketera".

Of course, IANAALS (I am not an ancient latin speaker), but I googled a bit and http://www.utexas.edu/courses/cc303/sounds/">found this. I didn't read, so it may disprove my point, but anyway

Re:Pronunciation?

[amRadioHed]

"etsee" and "sequel" may be 'faster'... but that's really just an excuse to act like you're a part of an elite club. And what about those admins using vi instead pico or notepad? Is that also just an excuse to act like we're part of an elite club?

Honestly people call /etc "etsee" because that's what it's called. Computers are literal, if it was supposed to be called "etcetera" it would be spelled out that way.