compound = "to make more difficult"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Fri Sep 12 15:54:06 UTC 2008


OED 2.g. "to complicate (a difficulty, etc.); to augment...1961" doesn't quite work here, where the meaning is "to make more difficult":
 
2008 Myron Allukian, Jr., & Paul L. Atwood in B.S. Levy &V. W. Siel _War and Public Health_ (ed. 2) (N.Y.: OUP) 313: It is sometimes diffiult to distinguish  between the consequences in Vietnam of the war with the United States and the effects of the First Indochina War with France, and of Vietnam's conflicts with China and Cambodia shortly after the U.S. withdrawal. Further compounding this analysis are the effects of the U.S. trade embargo, the inexperience of Vetnam's government in economic management, the effects of a century of colonial exploitation,...[etc.]
 
Wackipedia bonus: the authors cite Wackipedia "Vietnam War Casualties" (June 3, 2007) for their estimate of about "5.3 million Vietnamese...killed [between 1961 and 1975], of whom 4 million were civilians."  The latest version of that article reduces the estimate of civilian deaths (North and South) by _at least_ 50%. The versions available in May and early June, 2007, say  only "17.5" [sic!] Vietnamese civilians were killed between 1954 and 1975. 
 
It's the Information Age! Get over it! 
 
JL  




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