From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Dec 21 16:45:11 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D61C516A4CE for ; Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:45:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from mta10.adelphia.net (mta10.adelphia.net [68.168.78.202]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A7BB443D5A for ; Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:45:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com ([68.68.113.33]) by mta10.adelphia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.05 201-253-122-130-105-20030824) with ESMTP id <20031222004510.ZKCE12043.mta10.adelphia.net@potentialtech.com>; Sun, 21 Dec 2003 19:45:10 -0500 Message-ID: <3FE63E95.2020201@potentialtech.com> Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 19:45:09 -0500 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20031005 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Gary W. Swearingen" References: <3FE500F4.3060108@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: More trivia: origin of the wheel group X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:45:11 -0000 Gary W. Swearingen wrote: > Bill Moran 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. Interesting. I can't remember ever hearing the term "Big wheel" before. Perhaps it's some local slang that is seldom used in western Pennsylvania? -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com