turn-about

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> I would agree with Mark that "man-izer" (which I also have from a New
> Yorker cartoon over a decade ago, with the same telltale hyphen for
> self-conscious coinage) is an analogical formation (rather than a
> clip), as in "misandrist" based on "misogynist".

The only New Yorker cartoon I can find is this one from 1991, without a hyphen:

http://www.cartoonbank.com/1991/Shes-a-manizer/invt/110940

The most recent issue has an unhyphenated example in a movie review by
Anthony Lane, though with a rather different meaning:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/06/07/100607crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=all
"He and Douglas put their scenes together with no more ado than
someone making a sandwich, and they leave us with the wry thought that
the people the womanizer really loves—the ones he can live with, and
die with—are guys. He’s a manizer, and he never even knew it."

...as noted in the comments on Mark Liberman's Language Log post:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2367

Commenters provide other cites back to 1981 (mostly unhyphenated).
Josh Marshall has linked to the LL post, yet he still seems to think
of it as "his" neologism:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/06/will_manizer_neologism_catch_on.php


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org