transitivity of "expire" (fwd)

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:26 PM -0700 2/25/02, Rudolph C Troike wrote:
>I forwarded the preceding too soon -- here's the answer for the passive!

Amazing!  The language keeps changing under our very eyes and ears.
Whodathunkit?  I wonder if this involves a reanalysis of the common
participial adjective ("driving with an expired license", etc.) as a
passive rather than perfect form, which allows it to be reconstructed
as "X has been expired" rather than "X has expired"?  Curiously, the
only relevant (transitive) "expire" the OED lists is obsolete--

7. trans. To cause to expire or cease; to bring to an end, conclude;
to put an end to. Obs.

1579 LYLY Euphues (Arb.) 77 To swill the drinke that will expyre thy date.
1592 SHAKES. Rom. & Jul. I. iv. 109 Some consequence..Shall..expire
the tearme Of a despised life.
1594 NASHE Unfort. Trav. 6 If I woulde expire the miserie of his
vnspeakable tormenting vncertaintie.
1610 SELDEN Duello iv. 15 Death was vmpire by expiring the best
spirit of the one.
1612 T. TAYLOR Comm. Titus i. 10 These seducers..will not haue it
[circumcision] dated, when the Lord hath expired it.

--so it's clearly awakened after a long hibernation.  Indeed, it's
a...*sleeper sense*!  Next time you're  caught driving with an
expired license, you can trot out the dodge of "The Lord hath expired
it".

Larry


>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 20:47:42 EST
>From: Steven Bird <sb at unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
>Reply-To: Steven Bird <sb at ldc.upenn.edu>
>To: Gillian Sankoff <gsankoff at mail.earthlink.net>
>Cc: penguists at babel.ling.upenn.edu, linglist at babel.ling.upenn.edu
>Subject: Re: transitivity of "expire"
>
>
>Gillian Sankoff wrote:
>>  Has anyone encountered 'expire' in the passive elsewhere??
>
>Well, here's about 5780 more examples for you:
>http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%22been+expired%22
>
>-Steven