misreading fraud

[user_gary]

I just don't see how someone can easily make money by defiling or corrupting petrol pumps. In BE we use adulterate to mean to dilute a liquid, usually by adding some other less expensive liquid. The racket you suggest - fraudulently causing the pumps to misread the quantities - would be more likely called a petrol pump scam or a petrol pump misreading fraud. The word adulterate suggests to me that it was the petrol which was in some way debased, by the addition of some cheaper volatile liquid, than the misreading scam you suggest. Of course to call it the petrol pump adulteration racket does suggest that something was done to the pumps themselves, but the word adulteration is too particular to allow for such an explanation, in my view.

Though I know every word in the above highlighted group of words. I can't understand it as a whole when I read it.

Could you explain it please?

[Ouisch]

Apparently this is a debate about the use of the word "adulterate" when discussing a scheme that made petrol pumps charge the wrong amount of money for the fuel that was dispensed.

It's basically a petty argument regarding one word - "adulterated." The person doing the arguing is saying that "adulterated" is the wrong word to use in this sense, because that implies that the petrol was somehow diluted or tampered with. But, in fact, it was the petrol pumps that were tampered with, so the fraud scheme should be called by a different name.


I hope this explanation made some sense.


(By the way, it took some serious effort on my part to use the word "petrol" in this explanation..... It's always called "gas" or "gasoline" where I come from. )