Re[2]: Bizarre verbs

Subject: Re[2]: Bizarre verbs
From: Iain Harrison <iharrison -at- SCT -dot- CO -dot- UK>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 10:40:28 GMT

Fred Rudder says:

>>
If an architect devises a design for a building and calls that process
"designing", why isn't it valid for an engineer who devises or defines an
architecture for a technical system to refer to that process as
"architecting"?
<<

I don't want to get into the rather pointless discussion about semantics,
but want to focus on what exactly we are naming: The task or the product.

If an architect designs a building and calls it designing, why isn't is
valid for an engineer why designs a system to call it designing?

If we start to define the function by the product, the architect isn't
designing, she is 'walling', 'roofing', or to take a more generic view, she
is 'building'. (And yes, most of the architects I know are female.)

The engineer in your example is devising or defining, not architecting.

A comment to the whole of this subject: Here in the UK, the architect
doesn't just draw the plans. The architect is generally also responsible
for overseeing the building works, as far as I know.

Iain

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