weedeat

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 7/3/07, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
> A teenager told me that she and a friend had been doing yard work: "She
> mowed, and I weedeated." Yes, "weedeated" does seem like a better preterit
> than "weedate" (1880 Google hits vs. 105). The OED appears not to have
> "weedeater" or any backformed form (?!).

For background on the systematic regularization of "weedeated" and
similar forms, see Mark Liberman's Language Log post:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004151.html


--Ben Zimmer

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