A Note on the Name (Symex)

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1.1 A Note on the Name ¶

Symex was originally a tool for editing Lisp code, although it can be used with many languages, now.

Lisp has inherited a few oddball names from its deep prehistory, including the infamous car and cdr for the first and the rest of the elements in a list. But S-expression / sex-puh / symbolic expression — referring to the makeup of Lisp syntax — are all somewhat of a mouthful, too. Here are a few reasons why we might consider using "sym-ex" instead:

"Symbolic expression": 6 syllables, long in written form too.
"S-expression": 4 syllables, and confusing at least partially because it is a single-letter acronym, which is unusual. In addition, it is long in written form.
"Sexpuh" / "sex-p" / "sexpr": 2 syllables, short in written form. But I mean, these are terrible.
"s-ex": Speaks for itself.
"Symex": 2 syllables, short in written form, has normal linguistic analogues like "complex/complexes," and it’s fun to say! Symex also sounds like Ibex, and that’s obviously a plus.