New coinage?

[Wilson Gray]

Really?! I'm astonished! For me, such a form is just barely English.
Clearly, I'm going to have to expand my grammar to include these - to
me - odd-ball formations. I've heard such forms before and even made
some up, but, heretofore, I considered them to be nonce-formations
thrown into a conversation for laughs. What caught my attention in this
case was the fact that the speaker clearly wasn't just trying to be
funny. Needless to say, I find nothing strange about forms like
"name-calling."

-Wilson

On Aug 8, 2005, at 5:24 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject:      Re: New coinage?
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> On Mon, Aug 08, 2005 at 05:20:35PM -0400, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> Heard on Dr. Phil, spoken by an ex-husband describing the break-up:
>>
>> "We name-called each other."
>
> Well, this is in OED....
>
> We have one quote for transitive _name-call_ from 1973, and the
> intrans from 1988. This was edited before Newspaperarchive and
> ProQuest, so I will now sit back and await the Zimmertrain.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>