repropriate

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Oct 26, 2012, at 10:27 AM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
>
> More seriously, my suggestion of a blend of "reproduce" with
> "propagate" had in mind the transformation of "agate" into
> "iate".  And they don't compete for "the same slot", one competes
> (with "repropriate") at the beginning and the other at the conclusion.

my allusion to competition was to the standard story (discussed on this list a number of times and in many other places) about how most inadvertent blends arise: in planning for language production, two elements (words, in the case we're talking about) are entertained as a filler for some slot in planning an utterance; as a result of this competition, the speaker ends up producing a combination of the two -- the beginning of one with the end of the other (and, usually, with some shared material in the middle).

that led to my comments about the imperfections of "reproduce" + "propagate" as the source of "repropriate".

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org