<story><title>Instead of “auth”, we should say “permissions” and “login”</title><url>https://ntietz.com/blog/lets-say-instead-of-auth/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghnws</author><text>Having two almost identical terms that mean completely different things is not a very good idea. Also here you are explaining what the words mean, when &amp;quot;login&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;permission&amp;quot; are immediately obvious. Most people don&amp;#x27;t speak english natively either.</text></item><item><author>aeonik</author><text>&amp;quot;Authorize&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Authenticate&amp;quot; are excellent words. They go back to medieval times and haven&amp;#x27;t changed meaning too much.&lt;p&gt;Everybody knows what an &amp;quot;authority&amp;quot; is. It means they have power or capability.&lt;p&gt;Everybody knows what authentic means. Something that is proven to be genuine.&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two concepts, as they are used in crypto systems are specific, important to get right, and also inherently intertwined, confusing, and subtle. I&amp;#x27;m skeptical that changing the words would help.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s one of the many reasons we have the saying, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t roll your own crypto.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Trust and verification are just hard problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nulbyte</author><text>If you think two different words having different meanings is difficult, wait &amp;#x27;til you hear about contranyms! English is full of words like these, where context is needed to understand the meaning.&lt;p&gt;If something is fast, it moves quickly or not at all. Cocktails can be garnished, but so can wages. Sales or trade of a product could be sanctioned by one country, but sanctioned by another.&lt;p&gt;I generally think it is a good thing to communicate clearly. Sometimes that means using words differently to explain something. Other times, that means using words the same way as others. I think this is a case of the latter.&lt;p&gt;Also, I think the idea of &amp;quot;native speaker&amp;quot; is a bit of a red flag. There are plenty of people that speak English from birth but are utterly unintelligible, and there are plenty of people that speak English as a second language who speak more clearly than those.</text></comment>
<story><title>Instead of “auth”, we should say “permissions” and “login”</title><url>https://ntietz.com/blog/lets-say-instead-of-auth/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghnws</author><text>Having two almost identical terms that mean completely different things is not a very good idea. Also here you are explaining what the words mean, when &amp;quot;login&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;permission&amp;quot; are immediately obvious. Most people don&amp;#x27;t speak english natively either.</text></item><item><author>aeonik</author><text>&amp;quot;Authorize&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Authenticate&amp;quot; are excellent words. They go back to medieval times and haven&amp;#x27;t changed meaning too much.&lt;p&gt;Everybody knows what an &amp;quot;authority&amp;quot; is. It means they have power or capability.&lt;p&gt;Everybody knows what authentic means. Something that is proven to be genuine.&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two concepts, as they are used in crypto systems are specific, important to get right, and also inherently intertwined, confusing, and subtle. I&amp;#x27;m skeptical that changing the words would help.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s one of the many reasons we have the saying, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t roll your own crypto.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Trust and verification are just hard problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mistercow</author><text>The wild thing is that they’re apparently from different etymologies. “Authorization” comes from “auctor” in Latin, meaning “leader” or “author”, whereas “authentication” originally comes from the Greek “auto” meaning “self”. There probably was some cross influence that brought them into line though.</text></comment>