De-gaying

[Mark A. Mandel]

From:    Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>

        >>>
As for "de-rice", the innovator was my (non-linguist) wife, and the
object was my daughter--this was a while ago, as the same
daughter--now home on college break--has been just fine with her rice
distribution for quite some time.
        <<<

It's productive. No one has mentioned "debug" yet (OED 1945 in the
common current sense [or an obvious immediate ancestor]).

But this use with "gay" is an extension. I like it.

... Ah. OED says "de-" was used similarly in Latin(1), and shows
longstanding denominal use in English(2).

s.v. de-, prefix:

(1) [The long vowels are displayed in OED OnLine with graphics that
don't paste and I don't have the time to type them all in again.]

In Latin, de- had also the function of undoing or reversing the action
of a verb, e.g. armre to arm, dearmre to disarm, decorre to grace,
ddecorre to disgrace, jungre to join, djungre to unyoke, vlre to veil,
dvlre to unveil, and of forming verbs of similar type from substantives,
as dearture to dismember, from artus member, joint, dcollre to behead,
from collum neck, dcorticre to deprive of bark, from corticem bark,
dflrre to rob of its flowers, from flrem flower.

(2)
   2. Less frequently verbs (and their derivatives) are formed by
prefixing de- to a noun (cf. L. dfmre, F. défroquer), with the sense:
a. To deprive, divest, free from, or rid of the thing in question: as
DEBOWEL (1375), deflesh, defoliage, deglaze, deglycerin, dehandle,
delawn, demast, demiracle, demonastery, depark, deprivilege,
deprotestant, detenant, detruth; depetticoated, dereligioned ppl. adjs.;
de-legitimation.

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania