Week in Words

By ERIN MCKEAN

C'est la Hash Guerre

mot-diese

Alarmed by the encroachment of English tech jargon into their tongue, the language police in France have ruled that all government references to, you know, hashtags, will now use the term "mot-diese," or pound-sign word, pcmag.com reports.

"The Morning Download: U.S. Ramps Up Cyber War Forces," CIO Journal blog, WSJ.com, Jan. 28

The pound sign (#) is also known as the "pound key," "hash," "number sign" and "octothorpe." One origins story for "octothorpe" is that a Bell Labs engineer created it in the early 1960s from "octo-" (a prefix meaning "eight") and the name of Olympian Jim Thorpe, because the engineer was a fan.

Human or Hard Disk?

Captcha

Captcha, an acronym that stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart," was developed by Carnegie Mellon computer scientists in 2000.

"Ticketmaster Makes Online 'Captcha' Puzzles Easier," Associated Press, WSJ.com, Jan. 29

Other types of Captchas ask people to rotate images, identify pictures of cats or their friends (or both), or answer simple factual questions, such as "What month follows June?"

One, To-Do, Three

kanban

…the Kanban approach…orders tasks for various projects into three categories (to-dos, next up, and just completed).

"How Productivity Tools Can Waste Your Time," Personal Journal, Jan. 30

Kanban comes from a Japanese word meaning "billboard" and was developed by Toyota to help with logistics. For personal use, a kanban system helps to visualize the state of your task list.

FeeTube

windowing

In one scenario, video creators would start new channels and charge a subscription fee. In other possible models, creators would charge a fee to viewers who want to get early access to videos, known as "windowing."

"YouTube in Talks to Let Video Makers Charge Fees," Marketplace, Jan. 30.

For feature films, the windowing process usually means that a film will be in theaters for four to eight weeks, then in hotels and on airplanes, available to buy on DVD three months or so after that, and to rent starting within a month of the on-sale date of the DVD. Two years after a movie was in the theaters, it is usually available to air on regular television.

A version of this article appeared February 1, 2013, on page C4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Week in Words.