"Prophesize" Not in the Dictionaries

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 19:28:11 -0500, Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:

>On Mar 26, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
>> Not the best analogies, I agree. Perhaps
>
>>  "conversate" for "converse" (v.)
>
>Isn't "conversate" slang? Since I was a teenager, this has been used in
>the sense of "sweet-talk" v.

In hiphop usage, at least, it can range from "sweet-talk" to "have a
serious conversation".  See the Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive:

http://google.com/search?q=site:ohhla.com+conversate|conversatin|conversating|conversated

I see there's a fair bit of conversatin' about "conversate" in the archive.


--Ben Zimmer