Word of the Day
: June 22, 2012wetware
playWhat It Means
: the human brain or a human being considered especially with respect to human logical and computational capabilities
wetware in Context
With the right wetware at the helm, the company should be able to turn a sizeable profit.
"Over the weekend, an impressive crossword-solving computer program, called Dr. Fill, which I wrote about earlier, matched its digital wits against the wetware of 600 of the nation's best human solvers at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn." - From an article by Steve Lohr in The New York Times, March 19, 2012
Did You Know?
When the computer terms "software" and "hardware" sprang to life in the mid-20th century, a surge of visions and inventions using the new technology immediately followed … along with a revival of the combining form "ware." An early coinage was "wetware," which began circuiting techie circles in the 1970s as a name for the software installed by Mother Nature (a.k.a. the brain). Other "ware" names for people and their noggins have made a blip in our language - for example, "meatware" and "liveware" - but none have become firmly established in the general lexicon like "wetware."
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