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In several books that mention GUI, keyboard, or mouse buttons (e.g. the book Programming Windows by Charles Petzold), the authors refer to the state of a pressed button as depressed. Why is this term used instead of the word pressed, which has a simple and intuitive meaning?

Some alternative terms that could be a better fit are pushed, clicked, or activated. As someone who is not a native-English speaker, the term depressed is unintuitive to me because it resembles the opposite meaning: not pressed.

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4  
Because buttons become very sad when you press them. – JSBձոգչ Apr 14 '11 at 19:18
@JSBᾶngs Actually, people feel 'pressed down' when they are said to be depressed. – Kris Feb 18 '12 at 11:19

migrated from programmers.stackexchange.com Apr 14 '11 at 18:29

3 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted

From TheFreeDictionary.com:

depression 1. a. The act of depressing. b. The condition of being depressed.

And the verb:

depress 4. to press or push down

So ... depressed works just fine for the state of a button being pushed in.

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So to elaborate for the OP, "Press" means to push, regardless of direction. "Depress" specifically means to push DOWN. – Kevin Apr 14 '11 at 20:04
2  
It's interesting to me because "deselect" is the opposite of "select", so I've assumed that "depress" was used in the same way. Also, I'm terrified that this question was moved to this website. Spelling mistakes.. gulp – Andrej M. Apr 14 '11 at 20:31
up vote 4 down vote

"De" is also used as a prefix meaning "down to the bottom" or "away", which can also lead to "completely", as in the examples here: denude, denigrate.

It may count as an auto-antonym, also called contronym. But I can't think of an example of un-pressing something.

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On a manual typewriter, pressing Caps Lock both physically pressed down the Shift button and kept it depressed. So if you wanted to take caps off, you had to un-press the Shift button (usually by pressing Caps Lock again, thus making the Shift button undepressed). Maybe that's why it's all electric these days. – TimLymington May 14 '11 at 23:17
up vote 3 down vote

Depressed can also mean the the button is in a lowered state, which is the result of pressing it.

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