Talk:terp

• ?, J. M. G. van der Poel, "Agriculture in Pre- and Protohistoric Times", in the Acta Historiae Neerlandica published by the Netherlands Committee of Historical Sciences, page 170:

  The terp farmer made use of the plough, as is shown by the discovery of three ploughshares and four coulters. [...] Those who inclined to the stock-breeding theory based their arguments on the absence of ploughs, [...]. To return to Holland, arable land and wheat and barley seeds have been found in the terp at Firdgum (Friesland) which is near the sea [...].

— Beobach 03:34, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

RFV discussion: September–October 2020

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terp

Rfv-sense: An interpreter (program that parses and executes another program).

Both of the quotes refer to interactive fiction interpreters only. Is 'terp' ever used for, e.g., a shell or Python interpreter? grendel|khan 21:08, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Interesting 'cause I agree with you, Grendel, that this is probably IF nerd slang (I spent a little time in that world). But to them it means that: I mean to say, if an IF nerd were talking to another IF nerd about a Python interpreter they might very well call it a "terp", but maybe nobody else would. So I don't think it should be limited by type of interpreter but rather by who uses the word. Equinox ◑ 23:14, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

@Equinox: Interesting! We should be able to nail this down one way or the other if we can find either (or both) (a) someone outside the IF culture using it to refer to, e.g., a shell interpreter, or (b) someone inside the IF culture using it to refer to, e.g., a shell interpreter. grendel|khan 04:33, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, searching for the phrase "Python terp" brings up two Usenet posts, which I put at Citations:terp. And, while we need durable citations to show that a word exists; I think we could also look at non-durable ones to help us answer questions like "does only one group use this?", in which case, you can google "Python terp" and "terp for Python" and peruse the results (which include this Python mailing list from 2000) and see whether it's only IF people or not. - -sche (discuss) 07:10, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

End of the day we're probably not gonna find that many good citations. Thanks -sche. (And wow what a pair of different senses under the same etymology.) Equinox ◑ 15:21, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Anyway, this is cited now: besides the two citations in the entry, I put two on the citations page, confirming that it's used by IF people (so maybe merits a label), but not exclusively of IF terps (so, the definition is fine as it is). - -sche (discuss) 19:57, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Passed. Add a label to indicate that it's used by IF people if you like. - -sche (discuss) 23:41, 22 October 2020 (UTC)