Use of the word "string" to mean any items arranged in a line, series or succession dates back centuries.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=The Oxford English Dictionary |volume=X |publisher=Oxford at the Clarendon Press |year=1933 |title=string }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=string (n.) |url=https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=string |website=Online Etymology Dictionary }}</ref> In 19th-Century typesetting, [[Compositor (typesetting)|compositors]] used the term "string" to denote a length of type printed on paper; the string would be measured to determine the compositor's pay.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=The Century Dictionary |author-link1=William Dwight Whitney |author-link2=Benjamin Eli Smith |first1=William Dwight |last1=Whitney |first2=Benjamin E. |last2=Smith |publisher=The Century Company |___location=New York |page=5994 |title=string }}</ref><ref name=Burchfield1986 /><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel|Milwaukee Sentinel]] |date=January 11, 1898 |title=Old Union's Demise |page=3 }}</ref>
Use of the word "string" to mean "a sequence of symbols or linguistic elements in a definite order" emerged from mathematics, [[symbolic logic]], and [[linguistic theory]] to speak about the [[formal system|formal]] behavior of symbolic systems, setting aside the symbols' meaning.<ref name=Burchfield1986>{{cite encyclopedia |title=string |encyclopedia=A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary |year=1986 |last=Burchfield |first=R.W. |publisher=Oxford at the Clarendon Press |author-link=Robert Burchfield }}</ref>
For example, logician C. I. Lewis wrote in 1918:
For example, logician [[C. I. Lewis]] wrote in 1918:<ref>{{cite book |title=A survey of symbolic logic |___location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |year=1918 |page=355 |last=Lewis |first=C.I. |author-link=C.I. Lewis |url=https://archive.org/details/asurveyofsymboli00lewiuoft/page/355/mode/1up }}</ref>
<blockquote>
A mathematical system is any set of strings of recognisable marks in which some of the strings are taken initially and the remainder derived from these by operations performed according to rules which are independent of any meaning assigned to the marks. That a system should consist of 'marks' instead of sounds or odours is immaterial.
</blockquote>
According to [[Jean E. Sammet]], "the first realistic string handling and pattern matching language" for computers was [[COMIT]] in the 1950s, followed by the [[SNOBOL]] language of the early 1960s.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://redirect.cs.umbc.edu/courses/undergraduate/331/resources/papers/sammet1972.pdf |journal=Communications of the ACM |first=Jean E. |last=Sammet |title=Programming Languages: History and Future |date=July 1972 |volume=15 |number=7 |doi=10.1145/361454.361485 |s2cid=2003242 }}</ref>
