When writing my recent article ‘Anatomy of a Version Update’, we had an internal discussion about whether to refer to ‘On Premise’ or ‘On Premises’ software licences. Similar issues came up regularly during my telco career (think ‘Fibre to the Premises’ or ‘Customer Premises Equipment’), so I was up for the argument.
Use of the term “On Premise” within the IT industry is growing, and is close to becoming the norm if it hasn’t already done so. But that doesn’t make it right!
A common misconception is that if premises describes the plural, then the singular must be premise. That’s understandable, but in this instance it's not correct. The word premise has an entirely different meaning. Let's see how Oxford Dictionaries defines the two words, and some examples of usage:
So, if talking about physical constructions and not grammatical constructs, the singular of premises is premises. E.g. software is installed on-premises, not on-premise.
One of the reasons for the success of the English language is the way it adapts, taking on new words to fill gaps in our expression, and not being too proud to adopt words from other languages. For better or worse, the accepted meaning of words can also change over time to reflect changes in common usage. (E.g. “decimate”…don’t get me started!)
We may be fighting a losing battle, but while people like me still have any editorial control I can assure you that “premises” won’t be going down without a fight. And you can call that a promise. Or was that a premise?
About the Author:
David Lacey is Communications Manager at Orchid Systems. You can find out more about David and other Orchid staff members at the bottom of our About Us page.
