nouns - Is "authentification" a real word?


My professor used the word authentification in a lecture. I have always used authentication. Is it a real word or is authentication the correct term?



Answer



Authentication is the preferred form in English. The variant authentification is acceptable, but less common—it’s often used by non-native speakers who aren’t aware that it’s less idiomatic in English, because authentification (or an analogue) is the correct form (or at least widely accepted) in many eastern & western European languages:



  • Azerbaijani: autentifikasiyası

  • Basque: autentifikazio

  • Belarusian: аўтэнтыфікацыя (autentyfikatsyja)

  • Bosnian: autentifikacija

  • Corsican: autentificazione

  • Czech: autentifikace

  • Danish: autentificering

  • Dutch: autenti(fi)catie

  • French: authentification

  • German: Authenti(fi)kation

  • Haitian: otantifikasyon

  • Kazakh: аутентификация (autyentifikatsiya)

  • Italian: autentificazione

  • Latvian: autentifikācija

  • Lithuanian: autentifikavimas

  • Luxembourgish: authentifikatioun

  • Romanian: autentificare

  • Russian: аутентификация (autyentifikatsiya)

  • Spanish: autenti(fi)cación

  • Ukrainian: автентифікація (avtyentifikatsiya)

  • Uzbek: autentifikatsiya


(Source: Google Translate—transliterations from Cyrillic are a best effort and may not be standard/accurate for all languages.)


According to the Online Etymology Dictionary and Wikipedia, authentication was the original form, via Latin authenticare, from Greek αὐθεντικός (authentikos), from αὐθέντης (authentis) “author” + -ικός (-ikos) “relating to”—cf. Latin -ic(us).


According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the change to authentification seems to have happened in the mid-18th century—in English at least. It likely arose by analogy with similar words such as personification, modification, ratification, unification, &c., which all include the Latin element -fic-, from ficare, the combining form of facere, “to make”.


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