From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b659179a48c574cb,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,b659179a48c574cb,start X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Maintainable is not a jargon word Date: 1996/08/06 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 172463349 organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c Date: 1996-08-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Antoine said "Full OK with you here. You could add "maintainable" if it sounded English." Well I cannot speak for what "sounds" English, especially to a non-native speaker (just a guess from your name :-) but maintainable is a perfectly good English word, and the comment above sent me downstairs to lug up volume IX of OED 2. Maintainable has its own 4" entry on page 225. The definition is "That can be maintained, kept up, held, defended etc." which sounds quite reasonably applicable I would say! The first reference is quite early, even for the OED, it is 1439 Rolls of Parlt. V. 22/1 "No action to be mayntenable ayenste the seid named Executours. By 1541, in Act 33 Hen VIII c 21, we have something closer to the modern spelling "mainteinable", and the modern spelling is quoted for the first time in 1680 in the London Gazette. So you can use this word without fear of being in computer jargon mode. The OED also lists maintainability with a separate entry, although the first quote is more recent (Scientific American, 1943). OED also allows maintainableness with a first quote in 1727, another in 1865, but no later quotes, so one may deduce that maintainability is the preferred modern form. P.S. All the other common forms like Maintainer, Maintenance etc all have first class entries of their own in the OED, with old quotes (in fact maintainer goes back to 1330, one of the earliest quotes I have run across). P.P.S. The second (obsolete) meaning of maintainable is fun: "Affording a livelihood" It would be nice if this applied to the word in software use, but I am afraid that far to often people afford their livelihoods by making sure their code is NOT maintainable (except by themselves) :-)