incent : a big SOTA

[Mark A. Mandel]

John Baker:
    >>>>>

        I confess that I, too, failed to notice the first time around
that Jonathan stipulated the "-ive" word to be a noun.  That's a
significant narrowing, since "-ive" words are usually adjectives.
Still, in addition to "invect," there's alternate, direct, elect,
execute, operate, and probably a bunch of others that I haven't thought
of.  Of course, these still are not back-formations.
 <<<<<

We on this list are in the very small minority of the population that cares
or pays attention to word history and etymology. When Joe or Jane Doe is
looking for a verb form corresponding to "incentive"and consciously or
unconsciously considering parallels in the vocabulary that they already
know, they could(n't) care less about which of two apparently related forms
the other one was derived from.

And the paucity of nouns ending in "-ive", with or without verbal parallels,
should give us a clue as to why the attempts to find one for "incentive" are
all so displeasing.

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

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