September 5, 2000
Cauliflower.
If you’re anything like me (and I pity your loved ones if you are), you’re the type of person that just can’t seem to stuff enough ephemeral Macintosh knowledge into your limited cranial cavity. Well, now is the time to start up the trash compactor because we’ve got to make room for the historical background of everyone’s favorite keystroke modifier: the feature key.
“The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on its keytop; sometimes referred to as flower, pretzel, clover, propeller, beanie (an apparent reference to the major feature of a propeller beanie), splat, open-apple or (officially, in Mac documentation) the command key. In French, the term papillon (butterfly) has been reported. The proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate one subtle peril of iconic interfaces.”
This acerbically accurate observation is part of a definition from the voluminous and lovingly maintained Jargon File. If you still have a bit of space between the ears, I recommend trying to squeeze in Quinn’s Big List of Wrong Names for the Command Key. By the way, here’s a tip for all you BBEdit jocks out there: typing “shift-option-cauliflower-s” will let you save a copy of your current document to your FTP server.
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