Definition: The removal of someone's access privilege and system resources (Merriam-Webster).

Sample usage: Winston Smith has become a doubleplus ungood nonperson; please deprovision all mentions of his existence from the Ministry of Information computer.

Popularity: It's one of those words you suspect you're not supposed to know about. The people who use it wouldn't be the people who do it — management would tell the computer gnomes in IT to deprovision someone, but they'd say, "We need to zero out Winston." Or simply, "Nuke Smith." Not a word you want to hear, and not a word you want to use, either. You'd feel a bit soiled using a euphemism that pretends someone wasn't just shown the door with his family photos in a box.

JAMES LILEKS

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