v. tr. "suicide" [and "disappear"]

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:10 PM -0500 3/1/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>Wouldn't transitive "suicide" have to be either redundant or ironic?
>
>--Charlie

Somehow it reminds me of transitive "disappear", also a causative, as
ultimately borrowed from the Spanish (in reference to putative
left-wingers who were made to disappear by the right-wing juntas of
Chile, Argentina, et al.).  I recall an earlier possibly nonce
occurrence in _Catch-22_, when someone, probably Yossarian, objects
to the threat that someone would disappear him by arguing that
"disappear" isn't a transitive verb.

LH


>_____________________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 11:56:08 -0500
>>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>Subject: Re: To Suicide and Marriage v. CU
>
>>At 3/1/2007 11:33 AM, Matthew Kohl wrote:
>>>Sean Connery's character in "The Rock" (1996) uses suicide, v.  He
>>>says, "The moment they had the microfilm, they'd suicide me."
>>
>>So it's trans. as well as non.  (I'm sure I've heard "suicide" (v.
>>non-trans.), and not from Asians, but have no idea where or when.)
>>
>>Joel
>>
>
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