Provisioning for the Next Year (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Provisioning for the Next Year (Linux Journal)

Posted Jan 6, 2006 17:14 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Provisioning for the Next Year (Linux Journal) by Baylink
Parent article: Provisioning for the Next Year (Linux Journal)

Provisioning is a verb created, actually, by the telecommunications industry

I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that. The military is much older than telecommunications, and the military definitely uses the term. The military uses "provisions" to mean a military unit's supplies, and "to provision" to mean to supply with provisions. Provisioning is part of executing a mission, for example.

It's hard for me to see how the telecommunications people got to that word, but I assume it was inpsired by the military use of it (to supply with provisions). Engineers also talk about "deploying" machinery, which is term best known for its military application.

The thought process that leads one to invent the term "to provision" for "to provide" is a common one. Nouns are more abstract and harder to understand than verbs, so intellectuals tend to like them (as in, "provision of food is important," instead of "it is important to provide food." The noun is abstract enough that people think it's a new concept and forget that it's just an abstraction of a verb that's been spoken by the common folk for centuries. So when one eventually needs a verb form of the word, he derives a new one from the noun. I've seen "to solution," "to dialogue," and of course, "to impact."

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