Attritted

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:00 PM -0500 3/21/03, sagehen wrote:
>Speaking of military lingo, I heard for the first time in my life, so far
>as I can remember, the word "attritted" regarding Iraq's military armament.
>It seemed obviously a backformation from "attrition," and sure enough, the
>OED gives it as such from M20 /military slang/.  Is it ever used in any
>other context?  It was a Canadian military historian who uttered it on this
>occasion.
>A. Murie

I remember (and have somewhere) a very old clipping on military
back-formations like "attrit" and maybe "liaise" or "degrade" from
Safire's "On Language".   Could have been during Gulf War I.

larry