Locofoco

Pronounced: loh-kuh-FOH-koh, noun

Notes: I have not run across this word

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Yesterday’s word

The word captcha is “a test used to make sure that a human is using a system, not a computer program” (the test usually consists of asking the subject to read and enter distorted text).

First usage

Our word came into English in the 2000s (that is, 2000-2009). This may be the newest word I’ve covered

Background / Comments

I have heard of captcha (and have used them on some web sites), but I did not know that it is an acronym; it stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. You may have heard of the Turing test: it is named after an early computer scientist (Alan Turing), who proposed that a computer could be considered intelligent if a human being interacting with a another human being that the computer cannot tell which is which. Thus, a captcha is a kind of reverse Turing test in which a computer is trying to determine if it interacting with a human or another computer.