Origins
The word 'program' (British 'programme') is a Greek compound that has traveled from public proclamatβββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββion to planned event to computer instruction, always retaining its core sense of 'something written in advance.' It entered English in the 1630s from Late Latin 'programma' (a proclamation, an edict), from Greek 'programma' (a written public notice, an edict), from 'prographein' (to write publicly, to write before), a compound of 'pro-' (before, in front of, forth) and 'graphein' (to write, to draw, to scratch).
The Greek verb 'graphein' derives from PIE *gerbh- (to scratch, to carve), reflecting the earliest form of writing β scratching marks into clay, wax, or stone. This root produced one of the largest word families in English. Through Greek, it gave us 'graph' (a drawn diagram), 'graphic' (pertaining to drawing or writing), '-graphy' (the process of writing or recording, as in 'geography,' 'biography,' 'photography'), '-gram' (something written, as in 'telegram,' 'diagram,' 'anagram'), 'grammar' (the art of letters, the rules of writing), and 'graffiti' (scratchings, writings on walls, through Italian from Greek). Through a remarkable Scottish phonetic corruption, 'grammar' became 'glamour' β because in medieval Scotland, literacy and learning were associated with occult power, so 'grammar' (book-learning) shifted to 'glamour' (enchantment, magical attractiveness).
The spelling distinction between American 'program' and British 'programme' reflects different borrowing paths. The American spelling follows the Latin and Greek 'programma' more directly, while the British 'programme' was reborrowed from French in the nineteenth century. Interestingly, even in British English, the computing sense is typically spelled 'program' (without the '-me'), following American usage that became standard in the computing community.
Development
The earliest English sense of 'program' was 'a public notice or proclamation' β something written and posted before an event. By the early nineteenth century, 'programme' was used for a printed list of items in a concert, theatrical performance, or other organized event β the plan written in advance. This extended to 'a planned series of activities or events' generally, and then to broadcast media: a television 'program' or 'programme' is a planned presentation.
The computing sense emerged in the mid-1940s, when the pioneers of electronic computing needed a word for a set of instructions written in advance for a machine to execute. The word 'program' was a natural choice: it already meant 'a plan written before an event,' and a computer program is precisely that β a sequence of operations written before the machine executes them. Alan Turing used 'programme' in this sense by 1945, and John von Neumann's influential 1945 draft report on the EDVAC described 'programming' the machine.
The verb 'to program' (to write instructions for a computer) and the agent noun 'programmer' (one who writes programs) followed naturally. 'Programming language' (a formal language for writing programs) emerged in the 1950s. The metaphorical sense of 'programming' a person (conditioning their behavior, as if writing instructions for a human machine) appeared by the 1960s.