The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

[bbound at gmail.com]

On Oct 7, 9:07 pm, Damien Kick <dk... at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Perhaps our word "man" (manas) still expresses something of precisely
> this feeling of self-satisfaction: man designated himself as the
> creature that measures values, evaluates and measures, as the "valuating
> animal as such".[1]

Don't both "man" and those words for measurement come ultimately from
words for "hand" (similarly to words like "manual", as in labor)? Our
clever hands with their opposable thumbs being considered a defining
characteristic. And our tool use thus derived. Handspans also having
been a common (if imprecise) early unit of measurement (along with
forearm-spans, as in cubits, strides, and foot-length, from which the
measurement in feet still derives its name).