Daughter (pronounced daw-ter)
(1) A
female child or person in relation to her parents.
(2) Any
female descendant (now rare).
(3) A
person said to be related to an institution as if by the ties binding daughter
to parent (daughter of the church; Daughters of the American Revolution etc).
(4) Any
female (archaic in the English-speaking world but used sometimes by some cultures to indicate some closeness of family relationship, rather as aunt & uncle are sometimes used in the West).
(5) Any
institution or other thing personified as female and considered with respect to
its origin (eg Australia is the daughter of the six colonies).
(6) In
chemistry & physics (of a nuclide), an isotope formed by radioactive decay
of another isotope.
(7) In
biology, pertaining to a cell or other structure arising from division or
replication (eg the daughter cell; daughter DNA).
(8) As
daughterboard, IBM’s original descriptor for boards (now called piggyback
boards, riser cards or mezzanine boards) which directly (usually by soldering) connect
to motherboards (now called main or system-boards).
(9) In historical linguistics, as daughter language (known also as a descendant language), a language descended from another (its mother language) through genetic descent as opposed to a "sister language" which is one which also evolved from the proto- mother language but formed a separate branch. The model is that of a tree where the mother language is the trunk and the branches the daughters and sisters (each of which can have their own daughters and sisters). The image of the tree represents the diversification of languages from a root source.
(10) In fantasy writing, as merdaughter, a mermaid daughter.
(11) In
slang, as “daughter of Sappho”, a lesbian.
Pre 950: From the Middle English goghter & doughter, from the Old English dohtor
(female child considered with reference to her parents; daughter) from the Proto-West
Germanic dohter, from the Proto-Germanic
dokhter and the earlier dhutēr, from the primitive Indo-European
dughtḗr, source also of the Sanskrit duhitā & duhitar-, the Avestan dugeda-,
the Armenian dustr, the Old Church
Slavonic dušti, the Lithuanian duktė and the Ancient Greek thygátēr & thugatēr). The
Proto-Germanic forms were the source also of the Old Saxon dohtar, the Old Norse dóttir,
the Old Frisian and Dutch dochter,
the Old High German tohter, the
German Tochter and the Gothic dauhtar. Daughter, daughterhood, daughtership & daughterling are nouns and daughterless, daughtered, daughterly & daughterlike are adjectives; the noun plural is daughters or daughtren (archaic).
Dutiful daughter: Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) with daughter Ivanka Trump (b 1981; senior advisor in the first Trump administration 2017-2021) in an extended (stretch) Lincoln Continental limousine, New York City, circa 1992.
The common Indo-European word was lost in
Celtic and Latin; the Latin filia (daughter)
is the feminine form of filius (son),
the most obvious connection in Modern English being young female horses: a
filly is a beast under four and thus too young to be a mare and filly is still
used as humorous and affectionate slang to refer to a lively girl or young
woman. The modern spelling evolved in
the sixteenth century in southern England.
In late Old English, the form also emerged of a "woman viewed in
some analogous relationship" (to her native country, church, culture etc
and that use persists to this day) and from circa 1200 could be used to
describe anything regarded as feminine.
Daughter-in-law is attested from the late fourteenth century. The noun plural is daughters, the long archaic
form being daughtren and the last
surviving obsolete spelling was dafter. The adjective daughterly (relating to or
characteristic of a daughter) is technically neutral but has long denoted “dutiful
(towards parents)”, the “dutiful daughter” a frequent reference in English
literature. As well as dutiful, daughters can be difficult and Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; POTUS 1901-1909) was once asked by some Republican Party apparatchiks to "control his daughter" (Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980) who had a mind of her own) He replied he "could be president of the United States or he could control Alice but he could not do both."
The noun step-daughter was from the Old
English stepdohtor, the formation
aligned with the German Stieftochter. Grand-daughter, like the related forms to
describe recent ancestors and relations dates from 1610. The noun god-daughter (female godchild, girl
one sponsors at her baptism) was adopted in the mid-thirteenth century as a modification
of the Old English goddohtor. The noun filicide (action of killing a son or
daughter) dates from the 1660s, the construct being the Latin filius/filia (son/daughter) + -cide (a killing), the meaning extended
after 1823 to "one who kills a son or daughter", filicidal appearing
shortly after. Bathsheba was the Biblical
wife of King David, mother of Solomon, from the Hebrew Bathshebha (literally "daughter of the oath" from bath (daughter).
Lindsay Lohan: Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father).
I wait for the postman to bring me a letter
I wait for the good Lord to make me feel better
And I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders
A family in crisis that only grows older
Why'd you have to go
Why'd you have to go
Why'd you have to go
Daughter to father, daughter to father
I am broken but I am hoping
Daughter to father, daughter to father
I am crying, a part of me is dying and
These are, these are
The confessions of a broken heart
And I wear all your old clothes; your polo sweater
I dream of another you the one who would never, never
Leave me alone to pick up the pieces
A daddy to hold me, that's what I needed
So why'd you have to go
Why'd you have to go
Why'd you have to go
Daughter to father, daughter to father
I don't know you, but I still want to
Daughter to father, daughter to father
Tell me the truth, did you ever love me'
Cause these are, these are
The confessions of a broken heart, of a broken heart
I love you
I love you
I love you
I, I love you
Daughter to father, daughter to father
I don't know you, but I still want to
Daughter to father, daughter to father
Tell me the truth, did you ever love me'
Did you ever love me?
These are
The confessions of a broken heart, oh yeah
And I wait for the postman to bring me a letter
Songwriters:
Kara Dioguardi (b 1970), Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) & William Wells (b 1973). Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music
Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music. From the album A Little More Personal (Raw)
(2005).
Kim Ju Ae, First Daughter of the DPRK
Donald
Trump is by all accounts a good father and no doubt gave his daughters the odd tour
of the hotels and real-estate developments which are the core of the family
business but as daddy-daughter days go, they probably weren’t as much fun as
those arranged for Kim Ju Ae (b circa 2013) by Kim Jong Un (Kim III, b 1982;
Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011). Like just about everything else done by the
Supreme Leader, his daddy-daughter days are well-publicized by the KCNA (Korean
Central News Agency) and Kim Ju Ae had been seen accompanying her father while
inspecting nuclear warheads, watching ICBM (inter-continental ballistic
missile) launches and reviewing military parades although the most recent
highlight was of her driving a battle-tank on manoeuvres over a plain (she
seemed to be having fun). With an
elaborate headquarters located at 1 Potonggang-dong in Pyongyang's Potonggang
District) the KCNA may be the world's most productive state news agency and is
the best source for new Kim Jong Un content.
Of course, Mr Trump is commander-in-chief of the world’s best-equipped
military and, if so minded, could on next daddy-daughter day take his daughters
tank-driving although their enthusiasm for such things may be restrained.
DPRK
postage stamp issued in 2018 to mark Kim Ju Ae’s presence at a military base
where ICBMs were being displayed. Like
many young girls, Kim Ju Ae is much taken by the beauty of nuclear weapons.
Although
not discussed by the KCNA, there has in the West been speculation Kim Ju Ae is
being groomed to succeed Kim Jong Un as leader of the DPRK (and thus become Kim
IV) should (God forbid) the Supreme Leader drop dead. One important aspect of the succession would
be the choice of title to be granted to Kim IV, not a minor matter in the DPRK
where the personality cult of the leaders has so assiduously been cultivated. The DPRK’s leadership titles are not
arbitrary honorifics; they are components of the Suryŏng system, a carefully managed political theology blending Confucian
familial hierarchy, Marxist terminology and quasi-religious veneration. Structurally,
the key functional term is 령도자 / 지도자 (leader), the adjectives chosen to
mark legitimacy, continuity, and distinction and thus far the nomenclature has included:
Kim Il Sung
(Kim I): 위대한 수령
(Widaehan Suryŏng); “Great Leader, 1948-1994”.
Kim Jong Il
(Kim II): 친애하는 지도자
(Chin’aehan Jidoja); “Dear
Leader, 1994-2011”.
Kim Jong Un
(Kim III): 최고령도자 (Ch’oe-go
Ryŏngdoja); “Supreme Leader since 2011”.
Were Kim Ju
Ae to be elevated as successor, it would be the first time since the formation
of the DPRK in 1948 that the leadership would be held by a woman but on forums
in the RoK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)), users seems to think this not
significant and that it was at least possible the “Supreme Leader” epithet
might be re-used, the argument being (1) “Supreme Leader” has become accepted
as the apex designation, (2) institutional continuity would be maintained and
(3) it would conform with the dynamics of 삼대세습
(三代世襲, samdae sesŭp), the construct being 삼대 (三代) (three generations) +세습 (世襲) (hereditary succession). In Korea, the “three-generation hereditary
succession” of the Kim dynasty is the Great Leader / Dear Leader / Supreme
Leader sequence and for various reasons it’s unthinkable that the “Great Leader”
title could be re-used because part of Kim gamily mystique (of which much has
been manufactured) is that as the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung is and must
remain unique.
KCNA official image
of Kim Ju Ae’s driving a Cheonma-2 (M2024) third generation main battle tank,
March, 2026.
Indeed, despite being three decades dead, Kim Il Sung remains president. Kim Il-sung held an array of titles during
his decades as the DPRK’s dictator, the proliferation not unusual in communist
nations where the ruling party’s structures are maintained alongside the formal
titles of state with which a nation maintains relations with the rest of the
world. In office for a remarkable 45
years, he was designated premier (head of government) between 1948-1972 and
president 1972-1994. Additionally, he
was between 1949-1994 head of the WPK (Workers' Party of Korea) and in that
role was styled successively as chairman (1949-1966) and general secretary
(after 1966). During his 45-year rule,
there were ten POTUSs, six RoK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) presidents,
nine British prime ministers and ten Australian prime ministers and his tenure
in office spanned the era of the Soviet Union from its apotheosis under comrade
Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) to its collapse in 1991.
DPRK
postage stamp issued in 2018 to mark Kim Ju Ae’s presence at a military base
where ICBMs were being displayed.
Being dead however proved no obstacle to The Great
Leader extending his presidency, the collective office “Eternal leaders of
Juche Korea” (Chuch'ejosŏnŭi yŏngwŏnhan
suryŏng) created in 2016 by the insertion of an enabling line in the
preamble to the constitution. What this
amendment did was formalise the position of The Great Leader and his late son (The
Dear Leader) as the “eternal leaders” of the DPRK and was said to be part of juche, the term used to describe the
DPRK’s national philosophy, a synthesis of The Great Leader’s interpretation of
(1) Korean tradition and (2) Marxist-Leninist theory. It was an interesting legal move. Constitutionally, the office of president was
established only in 1972; prior to that the role of head of state had been
purely ceremonial and held by respected party functionaries, all power
exercised by The Great Leader in his capacity as premier and general secretary
of the WPK. However, merely by being
president, The Great Leader vested the office with such prestige that upon his
death in 1994, the position was left vacant, The Dear Leader not granted the
title. That nuance of succession for a
while absorbed the interest of the DPRK watchers but attempts to invest the
move with any significance abated as DPRK business, though in the more straitened
circumstances of the post Soviet world, continued as usual.
The
constitution was again revised in 1998.
Being a godless communist state, no fine theological points stood in the
way of declaring The Great Leader the DPRK’s “Eternal President”, the latest
addition to the preamble declaring: “Under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea, the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Korean people will hold the great
leader Comrade Kim Il-sung in high esteem as the eternal President of the
Republic.” The constitution,
as revised and promulgated after the death of The Dear Leader, again referred
to The Great Leader as “Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea” but in 2016 (The Dear Leader having been dead for an apparently
decent duration), another amendment to the preamble changed the administrative
nomenclature of executive eternity to “Eternal leaders of Juche Korea”, the honor now
jointly held by the leaders great & dear.
It was another first for the Kims and the legal mechanism is expected to
be replicated after the death of the Supreme Leader.
KCNA official
photograph: Ri Sol-ju (b circa 1987; wife of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un)
(left), Kim Ju-ae (centre) and Kim Jong-un (right), undisclosed location,
February 2023.
Although
the dynastic model (Kim I, Kim II, Kim II) may appear to be that of a hereditary
monarchy, the regime makes an ideological distinction between the DPRK and
decadent practices elsewhere, the succession based on 백두혈통
(Paektu hyŏlt’ong) (Mount Paektu bloodline) with the legitimacy conferred not
by “inheritance”
but rather “revolutionary
lineage”. Sitting on the Chinese
border, Mount Paektu is an active volcano and the highest peak on the Korean
peninsula; as well as being important in ancient Korean mythology, it figures
also in the legends of the Kims, Kim Il-sung said to have led a resistance
against Japan's occupation of the peninsula from bases on Mount Paektu and it
was there Kim Jong-il was born. Now,
with “three-generation hereditary succession” accomplished, in a sense, samdae sesŭp has been perfected and in
South Korea (or “the
puppet state to the south” as the KCNA puts it), the feeling the
internal logic of henceforth maintaining a “Supreme Leader” would be compelling
although that won’t stop some in the puppet state dubbing her “Supreme
Leaderette”.
IBM: Mothers and daughters but not sisters
IBM PC-1 (1981).IBM
didn’t invent the motherboard. It evolved
into the form in which it became well-known in the early 1980s because advances in technology had reduced the size of certain components (CPU, memory etc) which used to be separate devices which were wired
together to run as a unit. When IBM
released the original PC-1 in 1981, it was built around a motherboard which contained slots
into which expansion boards could be plugged and various connectors with which
compatible devices could be connected. Given
there were motherboards, IBM, in the innocent age of the 1980s, decided other
peripheral components, those usually directly embedded through soldering to the
motherboard, should be called daughterboards.
Quite how the nomenclature was chosen is either not known or IBM has suppressed the records and the fanciful notion that it’s because the early
motherboards contained more female than male connections is just an industry
myth. In the literature, there’s also
the odd reference to sisterboards though the name never caught on and "daughter-board" was sometime used to describe cards which plugged-into expansion cards but such devices were rare. Obviously, if a server has two daughter-boards installed, there's no reason why they couldn't, in that configuration, be called “sister-boards” but the convention never evolved.
IBM PC-1 motherboard (1981), expansion slots at the top right; it seemed small at the time.
A
daughterboard was a circuit board which extends the circuitry of
the motherboard and, being soldered, was connected directly, unlike the inherently swappable expansion cards which plugged-in using the bus or other (most often serial, parallel or SCSI (small computer system interface)) interfaces. Like a motherboard, daughterboards had sockets, pins, plugs and connectors to permit connection to other boards or
other devices and have been both part of initial product releases and post-launch
updates, the best known example of which were the MIDI (musical instrument
digital interface) daughterboards used to add functionality to a sound card. Except for the odd special build for someone really nerdy, modern personal computers now
rarely have daughterboards although they’re still seen on servers.
Daughterboard
(left) and bored daughter (right): 1984
Apple Macintosh 128 KB motherboard with SCSI (small computer system interface) daughterboard
(right) and additional RAM daughterboard (left). In 1984, having a machine with 1 MB RAM was a
way to impress people. An obviously bored
Chelsea Clinton (b 1980; FDOTUS 1993-2001) is pictured listening to crooked
Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) again explain why her
never becoming POTUS was the fault of others, Clinton Global Initiative annual
meeting, Hilton Hotel, Manhattan, New York City, 18 September, 2023. Chelsea had heard it all before.
Even before the twenty-first century interest in gender and gendered pronouns, IBM had renamed everything in the corporation which could in anyway be thought sexist, racist etc. By the late 1990s, although the term motherboard continued widely to be used, IBM had started calling them them variously main-boards or system-boards; daughterboards became piggyback or mezzanine boards. Interestingly, as part of the linguistic sanitation, IBM started calling hard disk drives "hard files" which was either looking forward to solid-state storage or just one of those inexplicable things which happens when projects assume their own inertia; whatever the reason, the "hard file" never caught on. The terms male and female for connections (modeled on human anatomy and used in everything from plumbing to the space programme) were retained because their use was universal and convenient or mnemonic gender-neutral substitutes eluded even IBM's language police. Male and female connectors may be about the only gender-loaded terms which will escape being labelled "micro-aggressions".
