[Avshalom]

>>In Emacs, what you nowadays call "cutting and pasting" is instead called "killing and yanking". It was called that way even before "cut" and "paste" got popularized, I think

Cut and paste refer to literal scissors/knives and glue/paste it predates the Gutenberg press.

[MengerSponge]

Emacs is based on arcane incantations and Elder horrors. It predates creation and sanity. :p

[klibertp]

Ok, I stand corrected. And it seems rather logical, too.

So where do "kill" and "yank" names come from?

[JadeNB]

> So where do "kill" and "yank" names come from?

This is discussed a bit on ESE, though the explanation seems vi-centric: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/40657/how-yank-ca... .

[microtherion]

One of the crazy aspects of Unix text editors is that "yank" means nearly the opposite in vi (where it stands for copying) as it means in emacs (where it stands for pasting).

[Retra]

First time I heard that yank means "yanking from the buffer" I figured I'd had a mini stroke.