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Date:      Sun, 21 Dec 2003 15:15:15 -0800
From:      underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen)
To:        chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: More trivia: origin of the wheel group
Message-ID:  <o9vfo9930c.fo9@mail.comcast.net>
In-Reply-To: <3FE500F4.3060108@potentialtech.com> (Bill Moran's message of "Sat, 20 Dec 2003 21:09:56 -0500")
References:  <3FE500F4.3060108@potentialtech.com>

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Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> writes:

> Does anyone know why the wheel group is called "wheel"?  I mean, why not
> "admins" or something like that.  "wheel" certainly is a cryptic name for
> the administrators group.  Anyone have any idea why it's called "wheel"?

Seems obvious to me.  "Big wheel" was slang for "one who calls the
shots" or "VIP" as long as I can remember.  And "wheel" was common
slang for "big wheel".  Some sys admin must have seen sys admins as
qualifying.  Why "big wheel" had that meaning, I can only guess, but I
suspect it came from horsey days when people's importance was
pretty-well correlated with the size of their vehicle's wheels.



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