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