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What does this word mean?

instaciate, otherwise instatiate

It's not in any of my dictionaries, but there are a few too many occurrences of this word in programming communities and across the Internet for me to believe that these people all really mean "instantiate."

Bonus: Argue for a correct spelling.

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    I think you are underestimating how, uh, interestingly people can spell English words, especially since a great many programmers aren't native English speakers. Your own provided links show people spelling words including "authomatically", "compilier", "it's characteristics", and one person who spelled the word in question both "instanciating" and "instaciate".
    – Mark Beadles
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 21:01
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    Programmers can make spelling mistakes too. The fact that kernal has lasted for decades is evidence. The intended word is instantiate
    – Jim Mack
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 21:01
  • Well, if the majority of English writers are not native speakers (which is now the case), and the majority of programmers aren't either (which is probably the case, but not provably so), then the next question is when does the word become "correctly spelled" as instatiate? And why does it make a difference how it's spelled, anyway? That was always for the convenience of printers; there's no benefit to uniform spelling for the reader or the writer, especially now that Alexa can spell better than you ever could.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 21:07
  • Looking briefly at your links, it's clear that "instantiate" was intended. Either that or the bots have their own spelling scheme.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 21:08
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    @JohnLawler A lot of information science problems become magnitudinally bigger problems when you lose uniform spelling. An ounce of prevention, etc.
    – SAH
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 22:03

1 Answer 1

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instantiate, verb
in·​stan·​ti·​ate | \in-ˈstan(t)-shē-ˌāt
instantiated; instantiating
transitive verb

: to represent (an abstraction) by a concrete instance
heroes instantiate ideals
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/instantiate

After reading more than a handful of the Stack Overflow posts that you linked in your question, I can confidently say that they are all misspelling instantiate.

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