Take the 2-minute tour ×  The prefix macro- is normally used for
large things like macroeconomics and macroscopic. How did it
come to be used to describe text macros in the programming
world?  share|improve this question Note that makros normally
means "long" in Greek. –  Cerberus Jul 29 '11 at 5:40 I have
just experienced a revelation. I thought macro == micro. Doh. – 
muntoo Nov 16 '11 at 5:26  3 Answers 3  up vote 46 down vote
accepted  In computing, "macro" was first used with assemblers,
which are utilities that perform simple translation of readable
mnemonics into machine instructions. Normally a single line in
an input to a basic assembler produces a single machine
instruction output; the line is commonly referred to as an
instruction. Productivity was increased when the use of what
were termed macro-instructions were invented. Macro- is of
course a standard prefix from the Greek meaning large, and a
macroinstruction was a new kind of input line which would
generate several machine instructions.  The O