to contracept
Arnold Zwicky
zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sun Nov 28 15:52:20 UTC 2010
On Nov 28, 2010, at 7:10 AM, 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...
for the record, this is not simple verbing, but back-formation of a verb from "contraception"/"contraceptive". so is Larry Horn's waggish suggestion "contraceive", but that involves reconstructing a stem in -ceive.
arnold
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