the.com/list
a sequence pretending bullet points equal thought.
means a set of items written one after another, usually to organize, remember, or fake the appearance of having a plan.
from List traces back to Old English 'liste' and related Germanic words meaning a border, edge, or strip of cloth — the same root that gives us 'list' as in a ship listing to one side, and the fabric sense of a strip or ribbon. The idea of a 'list' as a written series of names or items grew out of that strip-of-material sense: imagine names written along a narrow border or strip of paper. The 'ship tilting' and 'enumerated items' senses are genuinely separate branches from the same old root, not folk tales — just two different ways 'edge/strip' drifted over centuries of use.
- origin
- from old english liste, meaning border or edge
- psychology
- brains crave lists because they fake closure
- bias
- items at top and bottom get remembered most
- irony
- to-do lists outlive the things they list