incent : a big SOTA

[Jonathan Lighter]

Nice try, Mike, but OED shows "invect" to be a rather uncommon 16th-17th C. term, an alternative to _inveigh_, and regards it as having been abstracted straight from Latin _invectus_, past ppl. of _invehere_.  They don't see it as a back-formation from _invective_.

  Of course, it could be, *in theory*.  ("Communism works too--*in theory* ! " --Homer Simpson.) But evidently the idea of forming a verb in such a way was so unthinkable to the OED editors that they didn't...er, think of it.

  JL



Michael McKernan <mckernan at LOCALNET.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Michael McKernan
Subject: Re: incent : a big SOTA
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Laurence Horn wrote:

>They also don't involve back-formation the way "incent" does, FWIW.
>
>LH
and
>>> --- Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>
>>> > Can anyone name another verb that, like
>>> "incent,"
>>> > is formed by dropping the "-ive" from a familiar
>>> > English noun ?

Perhaps due to my previous flippant posts on this topic, it appears to me
that my later ex. drew no attention. I won't pull a Popik on this, and
claim a conspiracy to ignore my humble contribution, but I will repeat it:

What about:

invect - invective

see:

http://websters.wunderdictionary.com/dictionary/def/english/invect.html

http://websters.wunderdictionary.com/dictionary/def/english/invective.html

Not having seen the a full lexicographical treatment of either word, I
suppose that the question of 'back-formation' may be resolved by a better
authority than I have handy. But I do think this approaches an answer to
Jonathan's query.

Michael McKernan

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