retirement/ retiral

Tue Aug 8 16:44:32 UTC 2006

I'd never noticed it before, but in the past 24 hours I've twice encountered the word _retiral_ as a UK synonym for "retirement" (from business, career, etc.).

  In the sense indicated, OED has _retirement_ from the 17th C. to 1885, but _retiral_ only from 1879 to recent years.  Except for a "retirement" ex. from George Washington (via Webster), none of the cites for either term is from a North American source.

  Is "retiral" now the usual non-U.S. word for "retirement"?  Have the upstart Brits been messing about with our mother tongue again?

  JL

---------------------------------
See the all-new, redesigned Yahoo.com.  Check it out.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org