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At 09:04 AM 7/15/96 -0700, Bill Sullivan
<bsullivan -at- SMTPLINK -dot- DELTECPOWER -dot- COM> wrote:
>Re: Instantiate, Uniquify
>Someone you work with is playing games with suffixes. To see what's
>going on, take their words (instantiate, uniquify) to any good
>dictionary and look for the meanings of the suffixes (-ate, -fy) and
>then go from there, backtracking to the rest of the word if
>necessary. There is nothing wrong with this, per se. Just because
>it isn't in the dictionary doesn't mean it can't be a word.
You're probably right in the case of uniquify, but "instantiate" has a
well-established meaning in regards to object-oriented programming. It means to
create an instance of something (that is, to create a concrete example
of an abstract object). It's in FOLDOC, the online computer dictionary I
mentioned previously, and it's in Webster's New World Dictionary of Computer
Terms as well.
Rogers Cadenhead
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