Re: What is a lightweight language

[Dorai Sitaram <address@hidden>]

Joe Marshall writes
> 
> Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk@cs.brown.edu> writes:
> 
> > Maybe at MIT, they specialize in scaring their students by throwing
> > big words like "continuation" (more than two syllables) at them.
> 
> MIT students are expected to learn three syllable words by the time
> they graduate, but it is fairly easy to fake it if you have a good
> dic... diction... er... Webster's.

In my lexicographic moments, I have often thought that
the word _lave_ (= that which is left over) would have 
been ideal for what we currently call continuation.  
It is monosyllabic and distinctively so. 

(The trisyllabic but rather more homey _leftover_ would
have been OK too, but then we would have had to
rename call/cc as "put-in-tupperware".  Still, it would
have been in keeping with the copious food references
in some Scheme primers I know.)

--d