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US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 28, 2021 16:13 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle by Wol
Parent article: US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

> (Spelt that way because, for the Saxon landowners it recorded, it WAS doomsday.)

Well, it was spelt "Domesday", but that meant the same thing. Wikipedia says (and my undergrad-level profs also told me) that this is from OE and Norse "doom" meaning "law, judgement". The implication is that this was a book of unalterable law: this suggests that the book was considered ancient uncontradictable canon of sorts, and unsurprisingly this term is first found centuries after the book itself was composed, in the 13th century. The books' compilers didn't call them that at all! The survey the books record was semi-informally known simply as the Great Survey (the first of a number of Great Surveys in English history), and the record as any of a number of things, most commonly simply as (in Latin) the "enrolling". i.e. it was named practically, for what it was, an enrolling of properties and households, not metaphorically.

The meaning "doom" as in "disaster" is many centuries newer. The OED says that while "doomsday" in the meaning of "the day of judgement" is ancient, the related expansion of the term "doom" is much newer: 16th--17th century, and so, probably, is the implication that doomsday is in any way disastrous. (I have seen older uses of "doom" to mean "disaster" than the OED cites, which I should probably pass on if I can track them down again, but there's only about 50 years in it, certainly not centuries.)


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US Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle

Posted Apr 28, 2021 22:29 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Yup, I know the normal spelling is Domesday. But the practical impact on the Saxons was that they went from being land-owners under Saxon law to vassal tenants under the Norman conquerors. Their lands were effectively seized and rented back.

Cheers,
Wol


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