to contracept

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:10 PM +0100 11/28/10, Paul Frank wrote:
>Nothing unremarkable, since all sorts of nouns can and are turned into
>verbs. But just for the record, the verb "to contracept" is not in the
>OED. The string "to contracept" yields  6,040 Google results. I'd
>never seen it before today.
>
>"As Sacred Heart Major Seminary professor Janet Smith put it in The
>Catholic World Report, 'We must note that what is intrinsically wrong
>in a homosexual sexual act in which a condom is used is not the moral
>wrong of contraception but the homosexual act itself. In the case of
>homosexual sexual activity, a condom does not act as a contraceptive;
>it is not possible for homosexuals to contracept since their sexual
>activity has no procreative power that can be thwarted.' There's a
>logic here, but it's the loopy follow-the-dots logic that led an
>Egyptian imam to declare that a woman can work in the same office as
>men who are not her relatives, as long as she breastfeeds them first."
>   The Nation, December 13, 2010
>
>"But some theologians argue that the condom was not being used to
>contracept but rather to lower the risk of spreading AIDS."
>   The Philadelphia Enquirer, November 28, 2010
>
>According to the One Look Dictionary, "to contracept" is in the Random
>House Dictionary.

I've always like "contraceive" myself.

LH

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