on verbing "extinct"

[Wilson Gray]

I'm going to go with "render extinct." That's good enough for government work.

-Wilson

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: on verbing "extinct"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Nov 23, 2008, at 6:37 AM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      on verbing "extinct"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> from Gail Collins's column in yesterday's NYT urging President Bush
>> to resign his office forthwith.  Note the parenthetical:
>> ====================
>
>> ... (So many national
>> parks to despoil, so many endangered species to exterminate ...)
>> ====================
>
> very nice.  of course, she *meant* "exterminate" 'destroy completely',
> not merely 'make ... extinct'.
>
> arnold
>
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