This week’s theme
New words (relatively speaking)

This week’s words
prebuttal
captcha
crowdsource
google
anthropocene

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(KAP-chuh)

MEANING:

noun: A test used to make sure that a human, not a computer program, is using a system. The test typically involves reading distorted text.

ETYMOLOGY:

An acronym of Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The Turing test is named after Alan Turing, a mathematician and computer scientist, who proposed that a computer could be considered intelligent if, while interacting with a human and a computer, someone could not tell which is which. A captcha is a kind of reverse Turing test. Earliest documented use: 2001.

USAGE:

“Yet here we are, watching a carrier [Ryanair] that considered charging passengers to pee, opening a Twitter account, accepting American Express credit cards, and removing its annoying Captcha.”
Pol O Conghaile; Be Travel Savvy; Irish Independent (Dublin); Oct 5, 2013.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: