Conversate

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:07 PM -0600 1/24/01, Mark Odegard wrote:
>>This line of inquiry hasn't mentioned _recreate_, what one does when one
>>indulges in recreation, not the act of re-creation. The P.E. people use
>>this word all the time; is it otherwise visible/audible?
>>
>>Peter R.
>
>Truth to be told, I've only seen this sense in writing, and then, only in
>contexts that call attention to the problem. I've never heard PhysEd people
>use it at all, but then I'm never around such people.
>
>If the word really is in use, and M-W suggests it is (but without giving any
>guide to pronunciation), an acute accent (or maybe, a grave on the pattern
>of learnèd) over the C would be disambiguative. Curiously, M-W does not note
>what I regard as the main sense, that of 'create anew, replicate'; AHD4
>requires a hyphen for this latter sense.

Nice minimal pair, in that "recreate" [= to work out or whatever] is
a back-formation from "recreation", while "re-creation" is a
front-formation from "re-create" [= to create anew].

larry