ordinateur (French)
Where does "ordinateur" come from?
The French word 'ordinateur' originated from the Latin 'ordinator,' which stems from the verb 'ordinare' meaning to order or organize. While it historically referred to someone who performed an ordination ceremony, the modern meaning was coined in 1955 by philologist Jacques Perret as a more versatile term for a computing machine at the request of IBM France.
Full etymology tree
- ordinateur (French), 'a computer, a computing device.'
- inherited ordinator (Latin), 'orderer, regulator, arranger'
- affix ordinare (Latin), 'inflection of ōrdinō:'
- derived ordo (Latin), 'a methodical series, arrangement, or order; regular line, row, or series'
- affix -tor (Latin), '-er; used to form masculine agent nouns from verbs'
- inherited *-tōr (Proto-Italic), 'Forms agent nouns to verb stems.'
- inherited *-tōr (Proto-Indo-European), 'Derives agent nouns from verb roots, denoting someone or something who has performed the root's action.'
- inherited *-tōr (Proto-Italic), 'Forms agent nouns to verb stems.'
- affix ordinare (Latin), 'inflection of ōrdinō:'
- inherited ordinator (Latin), 'orderer, regulator, arranger'
Ancestors
- ordinator (Latin)
Descendants and derived words
- ordinador (Catalan)
- micro-ordinateur (French)
- microordinateur (French)
- mini-ordinateur (French)
- miniordinateur (French)
- ordi (French)
- ordinateur de bureau (French)
- ordinateur de table (French)
- ordinateur portable (French)
- ordinateur quantique (French)
- ordinateur tablette (French)
- ordiphone (French)
Updated May 2026
Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris