Mappings

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Specific tasks or duties given to someone ; sets of rules directing the transformation of data or symbols
2. Portions of work or responsibilities handed out to individuals or groups ; guidelines used to convert or interpret information from one form to another
3. Designated jobs or portions of work assigned for completion ; instructions that determine how to map or translate data elements

Etymology: "Mappings" is the plural of "mapping," so its story runs through the older noun "map" and the verb it spawned. "Map" came into English from Medieval Latin "mappa," which meant a cloth or napkin, and the word for a drawn representation of land appears to have grown out of that sense of a sheet laid over a surface. The plural form carries both of the word's modern senses: the plotted correspondences between one set of values and another, and the assignments or portions handed out in a larger task. The sense of allotting work is the more surprising thread. A mapping in that meaning is essentially a plan laid out over a set of people or duties, so the idea of spreading something across a surface runs through both uses. The converting sense, where one data format is matched onto another, extends the same picture of one arrangement laid precisely over another.

Synonyms: charts, diagrams, representations