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up vote 11 down vote favorite

An administrator of a website or network may decide to suspend a user, preventing them access for a period of time. Is there an antonym of 'suspend' meaning to re-allow that user access?

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4  
It might be a bit ugly and possibly even wrong, but it's definitely very clear in what it means: unsuspend. – Joachim Sauer Oct 12 '11 at 12:20
Are you referring to re-allowing the user access during the time of the suspension, or once the suspension is over? Or does it not make a difference? – Jim Oct 12 '11 at 13:58
@Joachim: what is "wrong" about unsuspend? (I'm not even asking about "ugly", because that is subjective.) – RegDwighт♦ Oct 12 '11 at 14:47
@RegDwightѬſ道: I don't have any documentation about it being wrong (and that's probably part of the problem), but I've never seen it used outside of a technical discussion (where many terms are pre- and post-fixed without much thought) and can't find any "official" documentation of the word at the moment. – Joachim Sauer Oct 12 '11 at 14:50
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@Joachim: we are talking about website/network admins here. If anything, they will complain about unsuspend not being technical enough. – RegDwighт♦ Oct 12 '11 at 15:30

6 Answers

up vote 65 down vote accepted

I would use reinstate:

to put back or establish again, as in a former position or state: to reinstate the ousted chairman.

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+1 .. However Hackish would be unsuspend. It is not a matter of being correct in English. system manglers have their own lingo. :) – Ahmed Masud Dec 1 '11 at 5:15
up vote 17 down vote

I would use either "resume", "restore" or "reactivate".

"Reactivate" is the clearest, but some may find it ugly.

The others will only make sense in a context where it is clear that the account has been suspended, whereas "reactivate" is fairly obvious even without context.

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Reactivate might no be so clear in case that when a user need to activate their account by email confirmation after first sign up. thanks for sharing though. – Sarawut Positwinyu Oct 12 '11 at 12:10
True. I hadn't thought of that possibility – Colin Fine Oct 12 '11 at 13:01
@Sarawut: your main question is about 'suspend' which assumes that you've already been activated once before. So 'reactivate' is very clearly a counterpart to 'suspend'. – Mitch Oct 12 '11 at 13:22
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"Restore" was going to be my answer. – user362 Oct 12 '11 at 14:50
To have one's privileges "restored" is what I've seen most often, in the context of system administration or user forums. Reactivate is more common for an account that has been deactivated, probably a more permanent condition (I don't consider the word ugly). A suspension is of a temporary nature. But either way, and then some, your answer covers it all! Nice! – Feral Oink Oct 12 '11 at 22:37
up vote 3 down vote

If you see "suspend" as a synonym to "lock" because you forbid the person to use the computer system or software he wants, you could use "unlock" as the antonym.

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up vote 4 down vote

As a sysadmin the word we usually use is just 'activate'. e.g your account was suspended because the password expired, I have just activated it for you. It may not be grammatically correct but that is usually the on-screen option, button or command used in the software to do what you are saying.

(Or if you want to keep looking for other words, the origin of 'account' comes from mainframes when you had to pay to use it and your account was the amount of money you had put in. When you ran out of money your account was suspended, just like business accounting systems would do to customers. Try looking at business accounting terms if you want more ideas )

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up vote 0 down vote

I use the verbs "activate" and "inactivate" for these purposes.

In the database, the "IsActive" field stores the answer, which is yes for active and no for inactive.

It's simple and concise.

Having to use terms like suspend/unsuspend or lock/unlock can be confusing.

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up vote 4 down vote

Suspend and Lift Suspension make sense to me.

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