back-"formate" (was: deigned; lorded; incoming)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Aviation people have been using "formate" for some years to mean "to join or fly in formation."  How long I don't know, but I don't associate it with the pre-1990 era (which began with the unforgettable "Big Bang").

  JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: back-"formate" (was: deigned; lorded; incoming)
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At 8:46 AM -0500 1/14/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On 1/13/07, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>Google yields a lot of "formate"s, but they seem to be either
>>typos/misspellings of "format" (noun or verb) or a noun referring to
>>some sort of chemical thingy--or else a zero, not Salisbury's
>>back-formed verb meaning essentially 'to use multiple formations'.
>
>Looks like former New York Giants coach Jim Fassel was a fan of
>(back-)formating:

This is a great find. As noted last night, Salisbury claimed that
Saints' coach Sean Payton likes to "spread people out and formate
people to death". Payton was the offensive co-ordinator for the
Giants in 2000, working under head coach...Jim Fassel. The
back-formating apple doesn't fall far from the coaching tree.

LH, now suspecting that Salisbury's use of "formate" was borrowed
from Payton's own usage; I speculate that either Payton caught it
from Fassel or vice versa back then. (Payton left the Giants after
Fassel demoted him and took over his play-calling responsibilities
during their Super Bowl run in 2000--presumably because his game
plans were poorly formated.)

>-----
>http://www.giants.com/news/eisen/story.asp?story_id=231
>Monday Morning Notebook, Nov. 18, 2002
>"I am concerned right now, a lot, with where we are health-wise,"
>Fassel said. ... "Like I said, last week the game planning was very
>tricky as far as how we were going to plan, how we were going to
>formate things, what the progression was for the quarterback."
>-----
>http://www.amani.com/reviews2002.html
>>>From Jim Fassel's Monday News Conference, 11/18/02
>Question: Did you think that you would be able to get Toomer and
>Shockey that open?
>Fassel: Well we based some things on it and we had to formate some
>more things...we had to formate them, you just have to formate them.
>-----
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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