access

access, accession

1. as nouns.

The two words are hardly at all interchangeable: accession means arrival or admission, whereas access means the opportunity of arriving or of admission. Accordingly, accession to the throne means becoming sovereign, whereas access to the throne means the right or opportunity to petition the sovereign. An access of a physical or emotional feeling such as fever, fury, joy, despair, is a sudden attack of it regardless of the physical or emotional state beforehand; an accession of strength, or an accession to a library, is something added to an existing stock.

2. as verbs.

Since the 1890s, to accession has meant ‘to enter as a new book in a library’

• (The new books have been promptly accessioned —G. M. Jones, 1892).

More recently, access has taken on a verbal meaning ‘to gain access to (data held in a computer)’, e.g.

• Design engineers can now access the computer directly through terminals in their offices —Scientific American, 1977

• One easily notices that consumers accessing pornography are mostly male —AmE source, 2002 [OEC].

A possible metaphorical application of the computing model of human behaviour may be seen in a new meaning in psychology: ‘to experience (deep feelings)’, as in

• Deciding all of a sudden that he's got to do some grieving, learn to access his rage —New Republic, 1992.

Use of the verb in more generalized contexts, such as The kitchen may be accessed from the dining room, should be avoided (use reach, approach, enter, etc., or rephrase).