meaning - Administrating vs Admining


I get the sense that the word "Admining", like the word "Admin" from which it derives, is used to refer to computer administration, while "Administrating", like "Administrator", is used more when it is finance or buisness being admin'd. I would like to know what other people think, though, if that is indeed so, or if my perception is wrong.


Also, as a side note, what about "admined" vs "admin'd".



Answer



The usual English verb for supervision is administer. The variant forms administrate and admin are both used primarily in technical jargon, mostly in reference to computer system administration. This Ngram shows that they see very little use in general English compared to administer.


It's not at all unusual to use -’d instead of -ed for forming the past tense of an abbreviation, especially for acronyms. Admined is awkward because there's (secondary) stress on the second syllable: admin'd or adminned would be preferable so that people don't read it as rhyming with mined.


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