From where come from the term "lowering"?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

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