Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:08:04 +0100 From: Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> To: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Should sudo be used? Message-ID: <46162A14.8030307@dial.pipex.com> In-Reply-To: <20070405191526.GA94631@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> References: <7d4f41f50704050142v9c73a17tb1812f218ea4416@mail.gmail.com> <4615030B.5040809@daleco.biz> <Pine.NEB.4.64.0704051115400.18840@glacier.reedmedia.net> <20070405191526.GA94631@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
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Jerry McAllister wrote: >I noticed one grammatical thing of question. In the first paragraph >under "Use ssh instead of Telnet or rsh/rlogin" it says > > "they should never be used to administrate a machine over a network," > >I think the word should be 'administer' instead of 'administrate' >unless this is some sort of British thing. I know, picky picky, but >it just stood out to me as I was reading. > > 10 years ago you might have been correct. An old dictionary on the shelf does not list "administrate". However both modern dictionaries I tried listed it with the same meaning as administer in it's "oversee" sense. On-line, try, for example, WordNet http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ (web interface: http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). I can find over a dozen references with a google for "administrate meaning". I can't find any etymology for this specific (and I would agree, in some sense wrong) form however it is clearly in common usage. Language evolves, not always in ways that everyone likes. Administer is a perfectly good word, and there's no need for "administrate" to exist. But language skills being what they are, someone looks at "administration" and it's quite understandable how they get to a verb "administrate". C.f compensation, for example. --Alex
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