'holdover' (verb), p.pple 'heldover'

Damien Hall halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Sat Jul 22 15:44:58 UTC 2006


An ad in the Philadelphia *Metro* for Friday-Saturday 21-22 July 2006 says that
the sale at the store in question has been

'heldover now thru Sunday'.

*Heldover* was a new one on me.  It's clear what the origin is, though I suppose
there are at least two ways we could have got there:

1. noun *holdover* > zero-suffixed verb *holdover* > past pple *heldover*
2. phrasal verb *hold over* > univerbation to *holdover* > p.pple *heldover*

There are c. 9,650 ghits for it.  The single-word version is not in *OED* or
*MW*: *OED* has *hold over* (v.) and *hold-over* (n.), while *MW* has *hold
over* (v.) and *holdover* (n.).

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

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