In several books that mention GUI, keyboard, or mouse buttons (e.g. the book Programming Windows by Charles Petzold), the authors refer to the state of a pressed button as depressed. Why is this term used instead of the word pressed, which has a simple and intuitive meaning?
Some alternative terms that could be a better fit are pushed, clicked, or activated. As someone who is not a native-English speaker, the term depressed is unintuitive to me because it resembles the opposite meaning: not pressed.
Best Answer
From TheFreeDictionary.com:
And the verb:
So ... depressed works just fine for the state of a button being pushed in.