It occurred to me today that “password” is now an entirely inappropriate name for the secret code that people use to access computer systems.

It shouldn’t be news to you that most system administrators actually prevent users from setting a secret code that can be looked up in a dictionary.

I’ve seen “pass phrase” and “passphrase” used in a number of places. It seems to me that this term is not only more appropriate, but sufficiently similar to the more common “password” as to not cause confusion.

Ok, now go out and change the wording on all your systems. I’ll wait here.   😉