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To you, and to me, and to a few hundred million customers of APC, Belkin, and a bunch of other suppliers of UPS. But then, I would have thought that "unvalidated" was self-explanatory in context as a handy adjective for "not validated". I was corrected on that misaprehension.
No doubt others on this list have been happily using other words as part of their ordinary and their techwriting vocabularies, and would be shocked to find out that many regard those words as obscure, jargony, or wildly ambiguous.
By the way, as much as "continuous" could describe a power-supply device intended to keep power available through fluctuations and interruptions of the mains supply, I find "uninterruptible" to be more pointed and suggestive of the device and the need it answers. To me, continuous would be ambiguous because it would dredge up thoughts about duty cycle, about pulse or square-wave output versus continuous sine-wave, and so on.
Now, as to what the definition of "is" is... :-)
- Kevin
Robert Lauriston replied:
> I think the word was invented by UPS manufacturers who for some
> (possibly good) reason didn't like the standard English "continuous."
> It's self-explanatory in context.
>
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 12:00 PM, McLauchlan, Kevin
> <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> >
> > Sorry, I would have allowed the dead horse to rot in peace,
> but this one just came to my attention in context (and I
> don't have a subscription to OED Online).
> >
> > Is "uninterruptible" (as in UPS) in your non-technical,
> general-use dictionary?
> >
> > That is, according to previous threads, is it a legitimate word?
> >
> > Or would some of you, when suggesting that the customer
> connect the equipment to an uninterruptible power supply,
> feel obliged to provide a definition or glossary entry for
> "uninterruptible"?
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