2785: Console Aug 5, 2024

While video games may give emotional comfort to some, a gaming console does not really have anything to do with consolation in the typical, emotional sense. However, rather than one being a modern divergence, both of these senses are divergences from the original.

A console is a tool from architecture, a type of bracket used to support a structure above, typically seen below balconies for example. Later, this was applied to other things, such as support underneath a wall-mounted table, like a kitchen counter for example. Eventually, in the 19th century other operational systems also stored away began to be referred to, such as an organ console and eventually electronic consoles in the 20th century, both denoting the control system. Now ‘gaming console’ does not really denote anything that’s hidden or structural.

The emotional sense developed similarly, and significantly earlier, in the sense that ‘support’ too can be physical or of emotional comfort.