> A safety device that prevents activation in unsafe conditions. -- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interlock#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interlock#Noun

> A safety device that prevents activation in unsafe conditions. -- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interlock#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interlock#Noun Which seems weirdly fitting considering the Win98 behavior on 80386 CPUs ;) Further googling leads me to believe that MS indeed made the term up for referring to atomic operations back then, but they kept it ever since.