A sentence in a manuscript we recently received refers to the person who determines a PC's configuration as its "configurator." But the root verb here is "configure"--meaning "to set up for operation esp. in a particular way," according to Webster's--not "configurate," so wouldn't it make more sense to refer to the person doing the configuring as a "configurer"? Webster's Collegiate doesn't list either "configurator" or "configurer," but its Eighth and Ninth editions do identify "configurated" as an adjective originating ca. 1752 and meaning "having a patterned surface--used of glass or metal." From the sound of the word, we'd have expected the surface to be ice and the pattern maker to be a skater. In any case, "configurated" does not appear in Webster's Tenth Collegiate, raising the question, why not?

In the Preface to the Tenth Edition, Merriam-Webster's Frederick C. Mish writes, "The ever-expanding vocabulary of our language exerts inexorable pressure on the contents of any dictionary. Words and senses are born at a far greater rate than that at which they die out." So is the loss of "configurated" attributable to death by natural causes or to euthanasia prompted by the inexorable pressure of our language's ever-expanding vocabulary on the contents of this particular dictionary?