1590s, "any high, snow-capped mountain," from Alps, from French Alpes, from Latin Alpes "the Alps," perhaps from altus "high," or albus "white" or from a Celtic word (according to Servius), or a pre-Indo-European root. Alps, the European mountain range, attested by that name in English from 1550s.
language
A list processing extension of Mercury Autocode.
["ALP, An Autocode List-Processing Language", D.C. Cooper et al, Computer J 5:28-31, 1962].
(1995-01-24)