Hacker News Reader

Comment by krisrm | Hacker News Reader

Mildly off-topic: is "earthed" a European-ism? I've only ever heard "grounded" until reading through this article and thread.

View on HN

"grounded", which is the US usage, derives from the phrase "tied to earth ground". This derived from the fact that an "earth ground" is literally connected to "the ground" ("ground" as in "the surface of the Earth" [1]) because an "earth ground" is a six foot copper pole sunk underground to which the "ground" buss bar in an electrical distribution panel is tied.

So in the US, it seems we shortened "tied to earth ground" to "grounded" for common usage while in the UK the shortened version became "earthed" [2].

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ground - noun definition #1 or #2

[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/earth...

Maybe also a translation thing, in German "grounding" is translated to "erden" which means "putting into or connecting to the ground", but "Erde" is also the substantive meaning "earth".

Words take on a range of meaning. "ground" and "earth" have overlapping meanings.

Sure. In English though it's fine to refer to e.g. the street as "ground", like when you drop your ice cream outside. In German, "Grund" would be something like the ground of a lake, your ice cream would drop on the "Erde". So they have the same meaning but in the overlapping area English is biased towards ground and German towards earth. Or something like that.

>Mildly off-topic: is "earthed" a European-ism?

Yes. We say "grounded" in the US English, but in UK English it's usually called "earthed".

Grounded means no tv or video games for 2 weeks.

I’ve done enough reading for electrical wiring for both small electronics and electrical power that I’ve seen both terms frequently enough that neither seems out of place to me.

In a previous life, we distinguished between ground and earth, where "ground" was a sloppy term to describe a circuit's zero reference, and "earth" was a precise term that described the zero-current safety path to the dirt.

The team was highly international, with a strong European influence, so that could also have been part of it.

In the UK, at least, that distinction is still used.

GND is the symbol for 0V in circuits. Earth is, as you say, the safety path to actual ground. It's the 3rd pin on domestic mains plugs, and you can't call something earthed if it doesn't connect to the safety path.

But I'm pretty sure we use "virtual earth" for op-amps :-)

It's certainly British English.

In Australia, Earth. Also Earth is not an uncommon term for ground or soil.

No, it's just English. However "grounded" is an Americanism.

British English - the author is Australian.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com