unrehabable

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yeah, but no " *irrehabable. "

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: unrehabable
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 10:27:57 -0400, Laurence Horn
wrote:

>At 5:35 AM -0700 6/16/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>_Fox & Friends_ reports that Terri Schiavo's autopsy shows her to
>>have been "unrehabable." An attorney for the Schindler family
>>agreed that she was "unrehabable."
>>
>>About 25 hits on Google, 1998 being the year to beat.
>
>Plus one for "unrehabbable", which is the way I'd probably have
>spelled it on the basis of my usual double-the-consonant-for-stress
>algorithm. (I'd pronounce "(un)rehab(b)able" on the antepenult root,
>although "rehab" itself gets primary stress.) And of course both
>residences and people can be (un)rehab(b)able, in slightly different
>ways.

Without the "un-" prefix, Usenet has "rehabbable" back to 1992. Some
later variants: "rehab-able" (1994), "rehabable" (1996), and "rehabible"
(1996). There's also "non-rehab-able" (1999), "non-rehabbable" (2000),
and "nonrehabable" (2004).


--Ben Zimmer

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