surveiling, to surveil?

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:48 AM -0500 2/2/01, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>>  It's in the on-line OED, though, with citations back to 1960 (first
>>  cite from a U.S. federal document, perhaps not surprisingly.  I think
>>  of it as being in the same (back-formed) bag as "liaise"
>
>Here are two earlier examples (I don't quite understand the usage in the
>first one):

My guess is that this is back-formed from the 'less commonly' used
sense of surveillance given in the OED entry below.  (The AHD4
doesn't include this sense of 'superintendence, supervision' so it
may by now be not only less common but pret' durn rare, even for
southern reporters.)  I presume the surveillance-over-premises sense
in the 1926 quote falls under the OED's "etc." and in any case is
very much alive today.

========
SURVEILLANCE
a. Watch or guard kept over a person, etc., esp. over a suspected
person, a prisoner, or the like; often, spying, supervision; less
commonly, supervision for the purpose of direction
or control, superintendence.
========

>
>1914 _Southern Reporter_ 65: 162  Even a compromoise by an insolvent
>client of the judgment or decree obtained by the attorney will not be
>surveilled or interfered with by a court of equity.
>
>1926 _North Western Reporter_ 208: 877  The lieutenant of police
>dispatched these two officers to surveil her premises.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
Ah, the "intellectual gumshoe" strikes again!

larry

L
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