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While we can all say that the concept of "trap on overflow", or "trap on divide by zero" makes intuitive sense – stop the program from proceeding – what I would do is look to the various traditional vendors since terminology from days of yore was not standardized (and perhaps still isn't).

The terms 'exception', 'software interrupt', 'interrupt', 'trap', 'fault' all have very similar meanings in certain environments.

While I don't know who really started it, the term trap is heavily used by Motorola, what with the 6800 and 68000 processors. The Intel docs of today use the term but I don't see it in docs for older Intel processors, e.g. 8080. With the Intel 8086 I see the term trap being used to mean single stepping the processor, which I don't see for 8088.

While we can all say that the concept of "trap on overflow", or "trap on divide by zero" makes intuitive sense – stop the program from proceeding — what I would do is look to the various traditional vendors since terminology from days of yore was not standardized (and perhaps still isn't).

The terms 'exception', 'software interrupt', 'interrupt', 'trap', 'fault' all have very similar meanings in certain environments.

While I don't know who really started it, the term trap is heavily used by Motorola, what with the 6800 (development started 1971, released 1974) and later 68000 processors. 

The Intel docs of today use the term but I don't see it in docs for older Intel processors, e.g. 8080. With the Intel 8086 (1976) I see the term trap being used to mean single stepping the processor, which I don't see for the older 8088.

While we can all say that the concept of "trap on overflow", or "trap on divide by zero" make intuitive sense—stop the program from proceeding—what I would do is look to the various traditional vendors since terminology from days of yore was not standardized (and perhaps still isn't).

The terms exception, software interrupt, interrupt, trap, fault all have very similar meanings in certain environments.

While I don't know who really started it, the term trap is heavily used by Motorola, what with the 6800 and 68000 processors.  The Intel docs of today use the term but I don't see it in docs for older Intel processors, e.g. 8080.  With the intel 8086 I see the term trap being used to mean single stepping the processor, which I don't see for 8088.

While we can all say that the concept of "trap on overflow", or "trap on divide by zero" makes intuitive sense – stop the program from proceeding – what I would do is look to the various traditional vendors since terminology from days of yore was not standardized (and perhaps still isn't).

The terms 'exception', 'software interrupt', 'interrupt', 'trap', 'fault' all have very similar meanings in certain environments.

While I don't know who really started it, the term trap is heavily used by Motorola, what with the 6800 and 68000 processors. The Intel docs of today use the term but I don't see it in docs for older Intel processors, e.g. 8080. With the Intel 8086 I see the term trap being used to mean single stepping the processor, which I don't see for 8088.

While we can all say that the concept of "trap on overflow", or "trap on divide by zero" make intuitive sense — stop the program from proceeding, what I would do is look to the various traditional vendors since terminology from days of yore was not standardized (and perhaps still isn't).

The terms exception, software interrupt, interrupt, trap, fault all have very similar meanings in certain environments.

While I don't know who really started it, the term trap is heavily used by Motorola, what with the 6800 and 68000 processors.  The Intel docs of today use the term but I don't see it in docs for older Intel processors, e.g. 8080.  With the intel 8086 I see the term trap being used to mean single stepping the processor, which I don't see for 8088.

While we can all say that the concept of "trap on overflow", or "trap on divide by zero" make intuitive sense—stop the program from proceeding—what I would do is look to the various traditional vendors since terminology from days of yore was not standardized (and perhaps still isn't).

The terms exception, software interrupt, interrupt, trap, fault all have very similar meanings in certain environments.

While I don't know who really started it, the term trap is heavily used by Motorola, what with the 6800 and 68000 processors.  The Intel docs of today use the term but I don't see it in docs for older Intel processors, e.g. 8080.  With the intel 8086 I see the term trap being used to mean single stepping the processor, which I don't see for 8088.