Latin datum, that which is given, plural data: in Euclid and in philosophy, the premises granted before argument. English adopted it for computation in the 17th-18th centuries; the information-age meaning, machine-processable givens, is 20th century. The dare family: donate, tradition (a handing-over), edit (to give out), date (given, from the Roman letter formula data, given at Rome on such a day).
The office skirmish: data is versus data are. Latin says plural; the tech industry says mass noun; the copy editors lost. The word's migration from premise to commodity tracks its grammar: once you stop seeing the givens as separate gifts, they become bulk.
The modern critique with ancient grammar: platforms speak of data as given while users experience it as taken, and Latin has both voices ready, datum (given) versus captum (seized, which gives capture, captive, and caption). The debate about the century's key resource is a conjugation dispute.
Are your data facts about the world, or things the world was asked to hand over?