Admin

How to spell admin

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce admin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does admin mean?

1. nounThe routine clerical and organisational tasks involved in running an office, project or system.
2. nounA person who manages a system, network, forum or organisation, especially one with elevated control privileges.

Admin in a sentence

• Most of her morning was spent on admin before any real work began.

• Contact the system admin if you cannot reset your password.

• The new software handles a lot of the tedious admin automatically.

• Only an admin can delete posts from the forum.

Where does admin come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Admin is a clipped, informal shortening of either 'administration' or 'administrator', both of which trace back to the Latin verb administrare, meaning 'to manage', 'to serve' or 'to attend to'. That verb was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'toward', joined to ministrare 'to serve', which itself comes from minister, a Latin word for a servant or attendant. English took 'administration' and 'administrator' from Latin by way of Old French in the late medieval period, and the brisk one-word abbreviation 'admin' emerged much later, in the twentieth century, as office and then computer culture demanded a snappier term. The same minister root sits inside the words 'minister' and 'ministry', a reminder that administration originally meant humble service rather than command. Because it is simply a clipped word, admin keeps the plain spelling of its longer parents with no hidden traps.

How the word is built

• short for administration / administrator: ad- (to)
• minister (servant, one who serves)