I Just Learned Why We Say 'Ditto,' And I Need To Lie Down

Plenty more words than we realise come from the printing press.

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how the words “uppercase” and “lowercase” originally related to the drawers certain letters were kept in; “stereotype” and “cliche” have their roots in Gutenberg’s machine, too.

But little did I know that one use of the word “ditto” is related to early photocopiers ― specifically, from an early photocopier made by Starkey Chemical Process Co. 

The word has had a few meanings in its time

The word “ditto” as a reference to what was just said comes from Italian, with Latin origins, Merriam-Webster says. 

This dates back to the early 17th century.

“That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanack below calls ditto,” reads a line in Moby Dick (published in 1851). 

By the 20th century, the word had taken its now-familiar ― and different ― adverbial form.

“As long as things go smoothly, interest in academic boards’ activities is minimal. (Ditto for corporate boards, when profits are high),” a 1993 copy of Trusteeship read. 

But “technology had a contribution to make too: the Ditto machine, an innovation that requires its own aside,” Merriam-Webster adds. 

What machine is that?

The Ditto machine, trademarked by the Starkey Chemical Process Co., was a sort of proto-photocopier (you can still watch ’60s ads for it).

The brand became so big that, like we ask people to “Hoover” a room or “Google” a fact, the trademark took over the word for copying altogether ― people would ask you to “Ditto” something instead.

And per Redditors in the r/Nostalgia subReddit, who can remember the machine, the smell of making copies from a Ditto machine was ‘intoxicating.’

“I can smell this photo,” a site user commented under a picture of the now-defunct machine. 

The word “ditto” meaning “to copy” is largely defunct now, too. Still, it’s a part of the word’s history that I had no idea about ― side note, anyone got one of the copiers? 

I really, really want to see what that smell’s like...