Etymology

dereference

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Today it means: To access the value or object located in a memory location addressed by a pointer or another value interpreted as such; to access a value being referenced by something else. Full definition →

English reference ← Latin dē- ← Proto-Italic *dē
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*de
  2. Proto-Indo-European*déh₁
  3. Proto-Italic*dē
  4. Latindē
  5. Latindē-
  6. Englishde-
  7. Englishreference
  8. English todaydereference

From de- + reference.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.