"Unring" Not in OED

[Laurence Horn]

>Paremiologishly speaking, I'd say part of the wit of the proverb
>"You can't unring a bell" consists in the rarity (if not, indeed,
>the presumed nonexistence) of "unring" as a word.
>
>--Charlie

...and, on the other side, the fact that it's semantically
well-formed (and just ruled out for the petty practical impediments
to time travel, reversing the VCR or DVD of life, and all that), as
opposed to "You can't unsmell bad" or "You can't unbe short" and the
like based on verbs that don't involve a change of state.
(Curiously, English did used to allow these, and you can find
attestations of "unbe", "unbetide", "untrusten", "unbecome",
"uncomprehend" and such in the OED, some as late as the 17th century,
with the meaning 'not to V', as opposed to the reversative meaning of
"unring", "unboil", or "unhappen".

LH

>_____________________________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:15:17 -0500
>>From: Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
>>Subject: Re: "Unring" Not in OED
>>
>>On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 09:49:57AM -0000, Michael Quinion wrote:
>>>  Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>>>
>>>  > Perhaps something like 'of or relating to the work of a
>>>  > paremiologist', the last word being one that is in your OED.
>>>
>>>  It may be appropriate, in view of comments about the OED's rules for
>>>  including words, to wonder about the absence of "paremiological" (or
>>>  "paroemiological") from the recent revision of the letter "P". It's easy
>>>  to find examples in scholarly books and papers. Since "paroemiology" is
>>>  there, it would be little effort, surely, to add the adjective? This
>>>  thread alone shows it would be useful.
>>
>>I can only assume that when the entries were drafted, the
>>evidence for _paremiological_ was too slight to merit
>>inclusion. It's always possible to hypothesize, and sometimes
>>even find, rare words made even rarer by the application of
>>predictable affixes. For example, Google returns six hits for
>>"paremiologically" (of which the first three are for
>>"Paremiologically oriented folklorists and cultural historians
>>have assembled collections of such invectives," from different
>>version of an essay by paremiologist Wolfgang Mieder on "the
>>only good Indian is a dead Indian", originally in the _Journal
>>of American Folklore_ in 1993). This doesn't mean that
>>_paremiologically_ should be included in OED, however--it's
>>extremely narrowly focused, and transparent to its intended
>>audience.
>>
>>With that said, it does seem as though _paremiological_ should
>>be considered, and I've passed it along to those to whom one
>>passes such things.
>>
>>Jesse Sheidlower
>>OED
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org