Every day, we turn on our computer to “boot” it up. It’s a word so commonly used that we don’t really attach any significance to it. We do it so often that we gloss over it. I recently came across a story about why it’s called “booting” and found it interesting.

According to Lifewire, the term boot is used to describe the process taken by the computer when turned on that loads the operating system and prepares the system for use. Booting, boot up, and start up are all synonymous terms and generally describe the long list of things that happen from the pressing of the power button to a fully-loaded and ready-to-use session of an operating system, like Windows.

The boot here is the shortened form of bootstrap. Wikipedia describes it as the act which refers to someone pulling themselves up by taking hold at the bootstraps. The term appears to have originated in the early 19th-century United States to mean an absurdly impossible action. To physically “pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps” is something a person just can’t do.

The term “booting” is sometimes attributed to a story in Rudolf Erich Raspe’s The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen. In one of the tales from this book, Baron Münchhausen, on one of his excursions, finds himself stuck in a swamp. Rather than sink or wait for rescue, he reaches down into the depths of the swamp and pulls himself up by his bootstraps, effectively laughing in the face of physics and launching himself out of the swamp. You can find more at How To Geek.

So there you have it. As is true so often, a word that we use so often and never really give any thought of the word itself, has an interesting orgin.