From where come from the term "lowering"?

[Asman01]

On Monday, 17 March 2014 at 16:57:46 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 3/16/14, 5:42 PM, Asman01 wrote:
>> I was reading Walter's article where he use this term and 
>> explain what
>> is it. He did a clear explanation abount what what it does. 
>> But where
>> come from actually this term? I can't find anything related 
>> with a lot
>> of keyword combinations on google/bing. And isn't only me want 
>> to know
>> about origin of this term
>> (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20252876/wanted-good-definition-of-the-term-lowering-in-the-context-of-compilers)
>
> I introduced the term "lowering" to our community as the word 
> was commonly used in the programming languages group at 
> University of Washington (led at the time by Craig Chambers and 
> Dan Grossman). It's commonly used in compiler backend circles, 
> see e.g. http://goo.gl/FEVypJ.
>
> It generally means the process of translating a higher-level 
> language with many capabilities into a simpler, lower-level 
> language. The latter could be an intermediate language, machine 
> code, or even a reduced dialect of the higher-level language 
> (as is the case for the way it's often used in D).
>
>
> Andrei

Thanks very much for the information.