back-"formate" (was: deigned; lorded; incoming)

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:21 PM -0800 1/13/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>In tonight's Sci-Fi Channel take on Beowulf (_Grendel_ [Nick Lyon,
>2007]), Hrothgar says, "The gods have deigned that my land be
>cursed."  That means "ordained."

Ah, then it's not _deigned_, it's _'dained_ .

>
>   Earlier, Beowulf had referred to Hrothgar's "lorded" halls.  That
>means "lordly."
>
>   Later, as the Geats / gits / begin their bombardment of Grendel
>with balls of flaming castor oil, a Geatish warrior shouts "Incoming
>!"  That means "Outgoing !"
>
>   Not that the movie was bad.  To start with, Hygelac gave Beowulf a
>fully-automatic bazooka-crossbow with telescopic sight to help him
>fight Grendel. Another good part was when Grendel's mother kidnapped
>Ingrid.
>
Not bad either was the Saints-Eagles playoff game, just ended.  Sean
Salisbury (who just contributed the classic blend, "what a better
face-lift" [for the city of New Orleans] < "what a good..."/"what
better..."), the ex-quarterback-turned-ESPN analyst commented as
follows about the New Orleans offensive strategy:

Sean Payton has a little Urban Meyer in him:  You spread people out
and you formate people to death.

[Payton is the New Orleans Saints coach, Meyer the coach of the
national champion college team, the U. of Florida Gators]

Google yields a lot of "formate"s, but they seem to be either
typos/misspellings of "format" (noun or verb) or a noun referring to
some sort of chemical thingy--or else a zero, not Salisbury's
back-formed verb meaning essentially 'to use multiple formations'.

LH

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