On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 12:08:04PM +0100, Alex Zbyslaw wrote: > 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.
Geeez, the language is falling apart. I was afraid of that. Why did I ever take 8th grade English and have to learn about verb infinitives when I could have been trying to spy on girls gymn class... ////jerry > > --Alex > _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
