to "course-correct"

[Charles C Doyle]

Just yesterday I heard, "Well, he finally man upped."

Looking at Google books, I found the (unrelated but interesting) double-inflected phrase "upping and leaving."

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Arnold Zwicky [zwicky at STANFORD.EDU]
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 6:26 PM


On Oct 3, 2011, at 12:43 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> ... I'm reminded of the conflict in the
> barracks, back in the day, between the supporters of _re-ing up_ and
> the backers of _re-upping_.
>
> Naturally, each side thought that the other side was *seriously*
> compromised in its control of derivation in English.

OED3 (March 2010) has "re-up" with "up" treated as a verb "with reference to the holding up of one's right hand on taking the oath of enlistment into the United States armed forces", so that inflection should be on the final element (as it is in all the OED examples).

but that wouldn't preclude analyzing the thing as a mystery head "re-" plus the particle "up", in which case inflection would go on the first element.

arnold

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