There are plenty of words we use in our daily life, no one asked how did they come up with these words and why we use them on daily basis. Lately I did some research on technical words we use. Really knowing the reason behind every term makes you see these words in a different perspective. Here are some interesting list:

Bcc/CC: Stands for “Blind Carbon Copy.” When you send an e-mail to only one person, you type the recipient’s address in the “To:” field. When you send a message to more than one person, you have the option to enter addresses in the “Cc:” and “Bcc:” fields. “Cc” stands for “Carbon Copy,” while “Bcc” stands for “Blind Carbon Copy.” Carbon copy was back in the day before copiers. There is this special kind of paper that actually had carbon on one side. Normally used in a typewriter. You would have a sandwich of the original paper were to type on, the carbon paper and another piece of paper that would ‘receive’ the imprint from where the first paper was typed on. If you made a mistake, it was impossible to fix. Also sometimes the papers would shift in the typewriter and it became very frustrating.

Bug: A “bug” in a computer program or system is a common term used to describe an error, flaw or a mistake that produces wrong results… Usually bugs arise from mistakes and error made by people in their program’s source code. Mark II was an early electromechanical computer used in the US Navy. On September 9, 1947, when the operators were using the computer to perform calculations, it gave the wrong results. To find out what was going wrong, they opened the computer and looked inside. And there they found a moth stuck inside the computer, which had caused the malfunction! The operators promptly removed it and pinned it on the log report, and wrote the following description, “First actual case of bug being found”. They also coined the word “debug”, which meant taking the bug out to get the computer working.

Leopard: Leopard is another name for Mac OS X 10.5, which was released on October 26, 2007. Mac OS X Leopard was one of the most significant updates to Mac OS X, with over 300 new features. Leopard was also the first version of Mac OS X to include Boot Camp, a feature that allows you to run Windows on your Mac.

Meme: A meme is a concept or behavior that spreads from person to person. Examples of memes include beliefs, fashions, stories, and phrases. In previous generations, memes typically spread within local cultures or social groups. However, now that the Internet has created a global community, memes can span countries and cultures across the world. Memes that are propogated online are called “Internet memes.”

Mouse: While most people don’t want to see a mouse running around in their home, they typically don’t have a problem seeing one sitting by their computer. This is because, along with the keyboard, the mouse is one of the primary input devices used with today’s computers. The name comes from the small shape of the mouse, which you can move quickly back and forth on the mouse pad, and the cord, which represents the mouse’s tail. Of course, if you are using a wireless mouse, the analogy does not work so well.

Spider : A spider is a software program that travels the Web (hence the name “spider”), locating and indexing websites for search engines. All the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, use spiders to build and update their indexes. These programs constantly browse the Web, traveling from one hyperlink to another.

Worm: has two widely different definitions. One refers to a computer virus and the other is an optical storage technology: Just like regular worms tunnel through dirt and soil, computer worms tunnel through your computer’s memory and hard drive. A computer worm is a type of virus that replicates itself, but does not alter any files on your machine. WORM can also mean “Write Once, Read Many.” It is an optical storage technology that allows a disc to be written only once but read an unlimited number of times. WORM devices were introduced in the 1970’s and gained popularity as a way of archiving data. The storage capacity of WORM discs began around 140MB, but increased to more than 3.0GB over the past few decades.

You can find more technical terms here