> If you have a different story to share, I'm sure the record would love to be updated. Sure, just looking at the Wikipedia article on "Computer file" [0], we

> If you have a different story to share, I'm sure the record would love to be updated. Sure, just looking at the Wikipedia article on "Computer file" [0], we see that the "punched card file" was only an early use of the word in relation to computing. But they show a slightly later use [1] that matches our modern notion much better, and that uses the exact expression "on file", without referencing punched cards in any way, so quite clearly not in a way derived from the practice of keeping information on punched chard files: > [...] But such speed is valueless unless - with comparable speed - the results of countless computations can be kept "on file" and taken out again [emphasis mine]. > Such a "file" now exists in a "memory" tube, developed at RCA Laboratories. Wikipedia also shows that "file" was often used in the early days of computing to refer to the storage location, the physical storage device, not the contents in memory. For example, what we'd today call "disks" were called "disk files". Wikipedia ultimately claims, unfortunately without a citation, that the modern sense of the term "file" came to denote the contents rather than the physical storage once the first "file systems" started being used, and those were managing multiple "virtual files" (that is, what we'd call virtual disks today). > I expect you are thinking of the parallel definition of "file", the one which often goes along with the word "folder" Yes, since that is quite obviously the metaphor most lay people have been taught in modern times at least: your data is organized in file folders, each containing multiple files. Basically in this context, "file" is more or less a synonym for "document". This is the most directly applicable non-computing equivalent of the modern computing term "file" (and it, again, doesn't match most things that are "files" in Unix). And yes, of course words have many different meanings. A file can also mean something that you use on your nails, but that is obviously not relevant to what we're discussing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220109114611/https://books.google.com/books?id=9SwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA96#v=onepage&q&f=false https://web.archive.org/web/20220109114611/https://books.goo...