to contracept

Randy Alexander strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
Sun Nov 28 17:27:05 UTC 2010


On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 11:10 PM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu>wrote:

> Nothing unremarkable,


And neither is that!  :)

Randy


> since all sorts of nouns can and are turned into
> verbs. But just for the record, the verb "to contracept" is not in the
> OED. The string "to contracept" yields  6,040 Google results. I'd
> never seen it before today.
>
> "As Sacred Heart Major Seminary professor Janet Smith put it in The
> Catholic World Report, 'We must note that what is intrinsically wrong
> in a homosexual sexual act in which a condom is used is not the moral
> wrong of contraception but the homosexual act itself. In the case of
> homosexual sexual activity, a condom does not act as a contraceptive;
> it is not possible for homosexuals to contracept since their sexual
> activity has no procreative power that can be thwarted.' There's a
> logic here, but it's the loopy follow-the-dots logic that led an
> Egyptian imam to declare that a woman can work in the same office as
> men who are not her relatives, as long as she breastfeeds them first."
>  The Nation, December 13, 2010
>
> "But some theologians argue that the condom was not being used to
> contracept but rather to lower the risk of spreading AIDS."
>  The Philadelphia Enquirer, November 28, 2010
>
> According to the One Look Dictionary, "to contracept" is in the Random
> House Dictionary.
>
> Paul
>
> Paul Frank
> Translator
> Chinese, German, French, Italian > English
> Espace de l'Europe 16
> Neuchâtel, Switzerland
> paulfrank at bfs.admin.ch
> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
Randy Alexander
Xiamen, China
Blogs:
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