vend n. - backform?

[Alison Murie]

On Aug 8, 2009, at 4:35 PM, Laurence 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:      Re: vend n.  -  backform?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:47 PM -0400 8/8/09, Alison Murie wrote:
>> The compressed air pump at a local gas station  (75¢)" Three minutes
>> each vend."
>> AM
>>
> I'm not sure why it would be a back-formation,
> although the verb "to vend" might itself be if
> it's derived from "vending (machine)" or
> "vender", but even as a zero-formation from the
> verb "vend" I'm not sure how easy it would be to
> make the case.  The OED has cites for the noun
> going back to 1618 (with the meaning "sale,
> opportunity of selling") and for the verb going
> back to 1622, so they've both been around for a
> while.  Still, the verb (and the derived suffixal
> nouns and gerundives) are a lot more frequent
> than the bare noun "(a) vend".  So it could be a
> zero-derivation (or back-formation?) for an
> individual speaker if not for the language.
> Ontogeny doesn't always recapitulate phylogeny.
>
> LH
~~~~~~~~
I didn't bother to look in OED (our books are still not arranged very
conveniently, since our move),  just checked the Apple Dictionary (New
Oxford American) & found no noun under "vend."
AM

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