disc and disk

M

mathman

Valued Senior Member
Are these two words (disc, disk) completely synonymous, or are they used in different contexts? If syn., why both spellings?
 
mathman said:
Are these two words (disc, disk) completely synonymous, or are they used in different contexts? If syn., why both spellings?
Click to expand...
Disk is American English for British English disc. (The French is disque.) So they are indeed synonyms, cf. traveller and traveler, colour and color etc.
 
exchemist said:
Disk is American English for British English disc. (The French is disque.) So they are indeed synonyms, cf. traveller and traveler, colour and color etc.
Click to expand...
There are some particular cases where it depends on the object.
E.g. magnetic storage devices such as hard disk drives, or floppy disks, etc, irrespective of whether you are English or UK, and similarly you have Compact Discs, which is also used in the UK and US.
Some sports use disc, not disk, and in medicine I think it may even depend which field it is that determines the preferred spelling.
But otherwise, year, in general the K is the US and the C is the UK preferred way, although K is increasingly more common in the UK.
 
Baldeee said:
There are some particular cases where it depends on the object.
E.g. magnetic storage devices such as hard disk drives, or floppy disks, etc, irrespective of whether you are English or UK, and similarly you have Compact Discs, which is also used in the UK and US.
Some sports use disc, not disk, and in medicine I think it may even depend which field it is that determines the preferred spelling.
But otherwise, year, in general the K is the US and the C is the UK preferred way, although K is increasingly more common in the UK.
Click to expand...
Yeah, more cultural imperialism. :D
 
I think the rot started in UK English (and Australian English too, which is closer to UK than to US) when floppy disks (discs?) became consumer items. Since a lot of the technology was imported from the US, the terminology went with it.

Speaking personally, these days I tend to refer to computer disks with a "k" and to other kinds of discs with a "c", but at this point in time that's little more than a personal idiosyncrasy. It would be fighting a battle that is already lost to try to insist on one spelling or the other. In the end, I think "disk" will win through sheer weight of numbers.

On another topic, my spelling checker just corrected me when I wrote "artifact" instead of "artefact". On checking, I discover that I have been corrupted by US influences in this matter of spelling!
 
It's impossible to be corrupted by U.S. trends. All trends should derive from U.S. standards, obviously. :)

You have discs associated with your spine. You have floppy disks in older computers. The "disk" spelling is mainly computer related.

None of this makes any sense of course but that's the U.S. way. Everyone else should follow. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top