[bigmeme]

Oh you silly duck! Semafor is a common word in a handful of other languages for things like traffic lights and such. I had to do a double take when I first saw it in a programming class.

Also hope you’re doing well it’s been a minute since our paths crossed on gdnet.

[rob74]

"Semaphore" is (old) Greek and means "sign (sema) bearer (phore)", and actually the meaning in railways and computing is more or less the same: in computing, a semaphore signals if a resource is in use; in railways, the resource is a segment of a railway line, and the user is a train.

[anthk]

It does the same role in plain roads between pedestrians, cars and similar vehicles.