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Does the verb “administer”, as in to give a drug, work like the verb “give” or like the verb “provide”?

Which of the following is better: 1 or 2?

  1. Patients are administered the drug.

Like “Patients are given the drug”

  1. Patients are administered with the drug.

Like “Hotel guests are provided with extra pillows.”

“patients are administered” 300,000 Google hits

"patients are administered with" 157,000 Google hits

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3
  • I like German way more than English.
    – user85526
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 4:32
  • First: the numbers Google gives for hits of any expression in quotation marks can be very, very, very wrong. Look at the actual Google hits for "patients are administered". Very few of them are followed by "with".
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 4:40
  • And if you don't believe me about the numbers, consider the following: patients are administered: 300K hits; patients are administered with: 156K hits; patients are administered the: 136K hits; patients are administered by: 219K hits.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 4:48

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2

Searching for usage using Google is problematic because Google doesn't index text the way you want it to. However, they do have a tool which does: ngrams.

This ngram shows no usage at all in published books for the phrase "patients are administered with", which is a fairly strong indication that nobody uses it at all.

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