to cloakroom

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/3/2012 10:10 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>his looks like a verbing of a compound noun (the noun "bone
>transplant" in this case).  my files have, inter alia, the following
>transitive verbs:
>   backstory, target-practice, mommy track, tea bag [several
> senses], jailbreak, sandbag, cloak-room [from Dorothy Sayers!]
>plus intransitive "sunset".

I am intrigued by what the verbing by Dorothy Sayers of "cloakroom"
meant.  Turning a room into a place for cloaks?  Putting a cloak into
a room?  But I suppose this is not surprising -- when she got to the
juicy bits, she wrote in French.

Joel

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