[pluma]

Somewhat off-topic, but I just realized (maybe because I'm a non-native speaker and barely ever use applications which have icons for "copy" and "paste") that "clipboard" in software and physical "clipboards" are two entirely unrelated concepts for me. So much so that I only just remembered that the paste icon represents a physical clipboard rather than simply some abstract brown rectangle with an abstract white rectangle on it.

EDIT: Maybe it doesn't help that in German Windows calls the clipboard the "Zwischenablage" (temporary storage) whereas the German word for "clipboard" would be "Klemmbrett" -- the German version actually seems to use a more abstract concept rather than the same direct metaphor as in English. Weird.

[jcl]

It's a conflation of two meanings of "clip": "to cut" or "to hold together". I'd always assumed that the software "clipboard" derived not from the common "board with a clip" but from a "board for clippings", as might have been used in a design firm in the days when cut, copy, and paste were done with an X-acto knife, a Xerox machine, and glue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste_up

I haven't been able to find evidence of this alternate meaning for "clipboard", though, as modern use has rendered it un-Googleable. The best I've been able to find is that its use in computing probably started somewhere between Xerox PARC and the Apple Lisa:

http://www.liquidinformation.org/onxeaplaprog.html

I find it fascinating, though, that this word has stuck, propagated essentially by word-of-mouth -- like the contents of the clipboard itself, the word is generally not shown in user interfaces. "Scrapbook", the name of the clipboard management utility in the original Macintosh OS, would have made a lot more sense semantically.

[Schlaefer]

Same situation here ("Zwischenablage"-country, was made familiar with the concept in the non-icon days, learned the shortcuts and never click icons). The icons were always somewhat confusing to me, I have to actively think what they mean if I want to use icon-only buttons.

I believe the now known icons were popularised esp. through MS Office. What I found on the net is that Susan Kare did the more obvious scissor cut-icon for the Mac earlier. Would be interesting to read where those icons originated.

[thaumasiotes]

As an English speaker, the windows clipboard and a physical clipboard are entirely unrelated concepts for me too, much like how "right" (the opposite of left) and "right" (a legal entitlement) are unrelated concepts.