Chancellor Edward N. Brandt, Jr., wearing ared T-shirt that said “The Great Discard,” chose a drawer of thecatalog and pulled it from the cabinet. With the help of a beamingCyril Feng, who was then the director of the library, he drew theretaining rod from the chosen drawer and let its several hundredcards ceremonially spill into a trash can decorated with coloredpaper.
The intellectual historian in me: 😱
discard
etymology?
from card as in card catalogue? thus dis-card or un-card, remove a card and throw it away?
apparently attested in the 16th century from card games...
late 16th century (originally in the sense ‘reject (a playing card’)): from dis- (expressing removal) + the noun card
though one should keep in mind that playing cards were also used as early index cards for their small functionality
remove aset.remove(item) Removes item from the set
There's also .discard(item) which does the same as .remove(item) except for one thing. It does not raise an error if the item is nonexistent.