Puter

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An informal, clipped way of saying computer, referring to an electronic machine that processes data
2. A casual shortened form of computer, used in speech to mean an electronic device for storing and handling information
3. Slang for a computer, an electronic machine that follows programmed instructions to perform calculations and tasks

Etymology: Clipped forms like "puter" are usually informal, so the surprising part here is the word they shorten. "Computer" once named a person, not a machine: in the early 1600s the poet Richard Brathwait used it for someone who calculates, and the sense of a calculating machine did not appear until about 1897, in the magazine Engineering. The word is built from "compute" with the agent suffix "-er", so it originally meant "one who computes." The same root has relatives that took very different paths. "Counter" and "cantore" are doublets of "computer," meaning they come from the same underlying source by separate routes into English and other languages. "Kontor" is another doublet, giving the word a surprising family that includes an object used for tallying as well as a person doing the tallying. "Puter" is simply the shortened, colloquial form of "computer," the kind of cut-down word that everyday speech produces for familiar machines.