Lexical Leavings

by Tom Gally

A word with two meanings:

uninstallable adj. 1 able to be uninstalled. 2 not able to be installed.

Some examples from the Web:

Sense 1

Technically, software can be programmed to be standalone, making it separate from the OS and uninstallable. However, that would be bad for (Microsoft's) business.

Sense 2

The CD in my case was uninstallable on Windows NT. E-mail response from IDG Books Worldwide regarding this problem provide no workable answers, but exposed a great many other problems that they have discoverd [sic] but have yet to fix.

(August 21, 2004)