incent : a big SOTA

[Jonathan Lighter]

One more obnoxifying fact about "to incent" is that its users seemto be insufficiently fluent in their native language simply to employ a "functional shift" to create a new verb. To "incentive the consumer" sounds pretty lame too, but at bottom it's comparatively eloquent.

  Can anyone name another verb that, like "incent," is formed by dropping the "-ive" from a familiar English noun ?

  JL

"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: Re: incent : a big SOTA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Minority opinion coming up!

I prefer it to "incentivize" [shudder].

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

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




---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 With a free 1 GB, there's more in store with Yahoo! Mail.

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