"comb-overed" (a cad, of course)

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 15, 2012, at 10:30 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:

> On Aug 14, 2012, at 5:51 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
>> From a review by Catherine Rampell in the NYTimes today of the play
>> "Getting the Business":
>>
>> "It helps that her new boss, Bert, is the type of comb-overed cad who
>> likes to give unsolicited career advice while massaging your feet."
>>
>> 8,570 Ghits for "comb-overed", vs. some unknown number for a quoted
>> "combed-over" since that also finds the simple past tense "combed
>> over".  No instances in the OED of either past-participlean
>> adjectival form, just the noun phrase (and without the verb "to
>> comb-over" either).
>>
>> I would have constructed "combed-over cad", but what do I know?
>
> you're assuming that we're dealing with the PSP (past participle) form of the V + Prt verb "comb over / comb-over", in which case the inflection would appear on the head, the V "comb" ("combed-over cad").  so you're seeing "comb-overed cad" as having the externalzation of inflection on V + Prt.  such externalization does occur, and i've posted about a number of cases (like "loginned") -- but maybe something simpler is going on with "comb-overed".
>
> namely that it's a derived Adj in "-ed" from the N "comb-over", parallel to "windowed" 'having windows, with windows' in "a windowed room" and huge numbers of other examples -- so an Adj meaning 'having a comb-over, with a comb-over'.
>
Maybe supported by its semantic proximity to similarly-haired "verandahed"-type adjectives with no verbal base, like "long-haired", "brown-haired", "fair-haired" and such.  (The moniker '"verandahed"-type' is a nod to W. H. Hirtle's 1969 piece on the construction, "-Ed adjectives like _verandahed_ and _blue-eyed_", J. of Linguistics 6: 19-36.)  Of course "(un)combed" itself is naturally analyzed as deverbal, but we also have "unkempt", which isn't.

LH

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