"Disc" comes from "discus" (the plate thrown in the Olympics)
"Disk" comes from "diskette" (French for "small disc")
I probably just outed myself as a boomer assuming that was common knowledge.
The fact of the matter is that the spelling "disk" probably entered common use from IBM who invented both the hard and the floppy disk, calling the latter the Type 1 Diskette. Enough people were exposed to the "disk" spelling from IBM usage that it kind of stuck, although in the early 1980s the spelling "floppy disc" was sometimes encountered.
In French we say disque for both. it's pronounced the same as disk and disc.
So add one more to the list: a commercial disk reused for your custom .WAD files can be a bisk.
My late father never quite got out of the habit of calling it the "Winchester" - itself a nickname for a specific IBM drive model.
They used to be separate, so you would mount the hard disk on the drive to make it accessible.
Of course now everything tends to be solid state even terms like "drive" are becoming less common.
Trying to explain arbitrary words with logic always fails.
[Edit. Sorry, misread your comment as saying "entomology."]
[Did I pass the interview? No? Understandable.]
I think Alan Shugart (or at least his team at IBM) started calling portable data disks "floppy disks," and then "hard disk" emerged to differentiate rigid disks from bendy ones. Maybe we can also blame him and his team.
The important thing is that someone gets blamed. :D
Nobody told me anything so I guessed it was good grammar and such.
But then noticed everyone calls them "disc brakes"
Edit: oh right, you're talking about the different spellings. Those were entirely arbitrary. We mixed between the two.
It seems like the distinction simply comes from British and American preferences.[3]
I have no idea how Apple jumped to such an arbitrary conclusion.
[1] Kempston Disc Interface manual: https://k1.spdns.de/Vintage/Sinclair/82/Peripherals/Disc%20I...
[2] Amstrad Disc Drive Interface manual: https://www.cpcwiki.eu/imgs/3/3f/DDI-1_User_Manual.pdf
[3] Etymonline entry for "disk": https://www.etymonline.com/word/disk
> For all other uses, disk is preferred in American English and acceptable in Canadian English, and disc otherwise.
How old are you? Nothing you said is accurate.
From wikipedia: >> A floppy disk, diskette, or floppy diskette is a type of disk storage made from a thin, flexible disk coated with a magnetic storage medium. It is enclosed in a square or nearly square plastic shell lined with fabric to help remove dust from the spinning disk.
sceptic - skeptic
mollusc - mollusk
celt - kelt
cabob - kabob
disc - disk
skeptic - someone inclined to question or doubt what they sense magnetically.
"Disc" is the correct spelling of the flat circular thing.
"Disk" was invented by someone in the 1980s either as an attempt at a trade name, or because they couldn't spell.
Then other people continued the mis spelling.
A disc is a disk-shaped object, such as in the form of a plastic dingus: Frisbee flying disc.
dTal•1h ago
Disk = round part hidden or no round part
Have I got it!?
Someone•1h ago
All of that “in the UK”.
Looking at the store, they’re using “SSD Storage” for SSD.
Symbiote•1h ago
Disk was used by American companies inventing hard disks, floppy disks etc.
British software often used "disc" for both, e.g. RISC OS on Acorn/ARM/Raspberry Pi [1].
[1] https://arcwiki.org.uk/index.php/RISC_OS_3 (see screenshot)
Wowfunhappy•1h ago
9rx•1h ago
HPsquared•1h ago
Bring back recursive acronyms!