Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustingetz | Hacker News Reader

"Ur-Lisp" – what is the exact definition of this?

"Ur" is a German prefix meaning "old", "original", "predecessor".

So Ur-Lisp would be the old original Lisp that is predecessor to all other Lisps.

Other examples include Urrind (Rind == Bovine) which would be the predecessor of all species of bovine. Urzeit (Zeit == time), which is a generic very ancient time period before all humans (where the Urrind or even the dinosaurs might have lived). Ur-Computer might be one of the first computers, like the original Zuse or ENIAC.

My favorite example Ursuppe == primordial soup.

Also a fantastic indie boardgame - also available in English.

Bonus example: Urgroßvater -> great-grandfather. You can add as many Ur-s as you wish.

In addition to predecessor it could also mean "archetypal."

Goethe believed he had seen the Urpflanze, or plant-archetype, while traveling in Italy.

Uradel -- people whose families have been noble for a very long time.

Briefadel -- people whose families were ennobled in modern times.

Edit: "modern times" in this context is "since the 14th century".

Another good example: the real-but-extinct animal aurochs = "ur-ox."

Ur-Lisp means “original” Lisp, in the sense of “origin”. “ur-“ is sometimes used as a prefix (Ur-Fascism of Umberto Eco comes to mind). In this case I guess it refers to the first Lisp, or maybe just the first prototypical Lisp, the founding father of all modern Lisps, I haven’t read the article yet.

It means proto-Lisp.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur-

Now, to your original question. No idea which of the early Lisps qualify exactly as such, or until when.

Possibly reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur, the first prehistoric city, in ancient Mesopotamia

Apparently not:

From Middle High German ur-, from Old High German ur-, ir- (“thoroughly”), from Proto-Germanic *uz- (“out”).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur-#German

that's a popular urban myth, alas the origin is some predecessor language to German.

https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur-

So Ur- comes from Urdeutsch? :-)

You are joking, but the Proto-Germanic language (the ancestor of all current Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, Icelandic, Faroese, etc. (sorry for the nested parens, but this is a Lisp thread))) is actually called “urgermansk” in Scandinavia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com