Why are Asynchronous processes not called Synchronous?

Posted by Balk on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Balk
Published on 2009-10-20T18:47:30Z Indexed on 2011/01/05 19:54 UTC
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asynchronous

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terminology

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parallel-processing

So I'm a little confused by this terminology.

Everyone refers to "Asynchronous" computing as running different processes on seperate threads, which gives the illusion that these processes are running at the same time.

This is not the definition of the word asynchronous.

a·syn·chro·nous
–adjective 
1. not occurring at the same time. 
2. (of a computer or other electrical machine) having each operation started only after the preceding operation is completed.

What am I not understanding here?

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