# "computer" as adjective or adverb
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 9, 2006, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912 "2006-04-09T02:38:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2006, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912/1 "2006-04-09T02:38:37Z")
Remember when computers were a whole new concept in the latter decades of the 20th century? How marvelous it seemed to have these tiny machines (or what we then thought were tiny machines) capable of such unprecedented capacities. And in your own home, too, not some IBM laboratory where people in lab coats, carrying clipboards, tended to giant mega-machines and watched the disks whir and the lights blink mysteriously. Instead we simply flipped on the electric switch and we had a computer running in our own houses. Amazing.
Anyway, I always found it amusing that, agog with this phenomenon, people tended to use the modifier “computer” to describe things we take for granted nowadays. You’d never tell someone “Wait, I’ll get you a computer printout” anymore, would you? No, obviously, if you’re printing something out, there’s a computer involved. People would speak of doing a computer analysis, or a computer report, as if the machine were somehow doing the work instead of you.
This use of the modifier was so prevalent, yet I can’t remember all the redundant ways people used to use this locution. What other terms used to be modified with the word “computer” that have dropped out of the language by this point?
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2006, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912/2 "2006-04-09T03:27:16Z")
Computer card. The paper kind, I mean.
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### Author:  [@nivlac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nivlac)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2006, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912/3 "2006-04-09T04:02:12Z")
computer keyboard, monitor, workstation
computer systems analyst
computer encryption
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2006, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912/4 "2006-04-09T05:11:33Z")
Computer graphics.
Computer type.
Computer art (still used).
But how would compute be used as an adverb?
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### Author:  [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912/5 "2006-04-09T17:40:15Z")
Computer beige or something similar would be making “computer” an adverb.
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### Author:  [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2006, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912/6 "2006-04-09T17:54:52Z")
“computer assisted”?
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2006, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/computer-as-adjective-or-adverb/351912/7 "2006-04-10T00:43:45Z")
That’s mostly just called CAD nowadays.