The Wrong Word Entirely, # 56

Here’s a phrase that is increasing in popularity across the journalistic board:

Source: BBC News (Android), ‘EE to take over 58 Phones 4U stores’. Link: online version

Placing a company into administration for insolvency is a legal process that has to be organized. A company can thus enter administration, or go into administration, or be put or placed into administration. All these terms are used by financial professionals.

Logically, however, a company cannot fall into administration. Falling is an accidental, spontaneous action. It is thus not meaningful to apply it to the formal process of administration. To use fall not only sets up a contradiction within the phrase, but it also implies that the company has been lax in relation to its financial situation — ‘Oh heck! I’ve just noticed we’re on the edge of insolvency…’ — where it is far more likely to have been trying a range of measures short of administration to solve its problems.

It’s hard to see why this phrase came to be used.

fall into administration