ungrade
Today I posted a note to a local list and misspelled "upgrade" as "ungrade". Todd Lewis, an excellent fellow all around whom I have known for too many years to think about, commented in a reply to my message:
Hey, Bil! I know it was a typo, but I really like the word: ungrade.
Because until a few days after it's done, you don't really know if it was an upgrade, downgrade, degrade, retrograde, or what. "Ungrade" sounds like you're stepping off into an unknown state, which is exactly what's happening.
He's exactly right, and I wish I had thought of it. For example, I recently thought I was upgrading my workstation from Snow Leopard to Lion, but I decided I couldn't stand Lion yet. As as aside, I have about decided that you should only do one major system upgrade on mac hardware, since I often have problem with the second major rev, but in fairness, I'm pretty hard on the software. But I digress. I lived with Lion for a week or so, decided to go back, and found it a difficult process involving blanking drives and mounting machines in target disk mode. So it wasn't an upgrade, clearly, nor a downgrade, since the downgrade was going back to Snow. Ungrade suits perfectly, and it will the next time I try Lion as I'll have a cold ball of concern in my soul as I start the installer.
Categories: Rants, Things to learn