Login to Christmas

I saw three ships come log-ing in on Christmas Day on Christmas Day. Where did login come from? From ships - it comes from the 'chip log' that was used to record distance travelled at sea, recorded in a ship's log. As part of computers, its humble beginning was to keep a log of users' access to the system.  Today it is the all powerful gatekeeper: the act of logging in to a database, mobile device, or computer, especially a multiuser computer or a remote or networked computer system. a username and password that allows a person to log in to a computer system, network, mobile device, or user account.   Only Dictionary.com covers its problematic word form: "Many who are neither professionals in the computer field nor amateur tech enthusiasts condemn the use of the solid form login as a verb, and with reason. It doesn’t behave like a normal verb. You cannot say you have loginned, and you are never in the process of loginning. Moreover, you cannot even ask someone to login you; you must ask that person to log you in. Clearly, it is the two-word phrase log in that functions fully as an English verb and not the solid form. Normally, we would expect log in, the verb phrase and login, the noun to behave in the same way as similar pairs: blow out/blowout, crack down/crackdown, hang up/hangup, splash down/splashdown, turn off/turnoff,where the two-word phrase is a verb and the one-word form a noun. And yet, this gluing together of terms like login, logon, backup, and setup as verbs is common, especially in writing about computers. Not for everyone, however. Some well-known software companies, for example, carefully maintain the distinction in their programs and documentation." For such a common expression, there aren't very many jokes:   How do trees use twitter? They log in. Why did the tree fall on the computer? It wanted to log in. I tried joining a lumberjack site for some strength tips. I couldn't log in. Today's picture was in the Cuba images - part of a statue and a great image for tomorrow's  Winter Solstice at 11:19p.m. This angle makes the sun look like he is sad with a tear in his eye.  But actually, he has a smile, and knows that the shortest day will be done.

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