Disappeared as transitive

[Jonathan Lighter]

Heller used this near the end of Catch-22, IIRC. That would have been in
1961.

It was popularized, possibly via a parallel inspiration in Spanish, during
the military dictatorship in Argentina.

JL

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 7:36 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Disappeared as transitive
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The election of Argentinean cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as papa has =
> brought Argentina's dirty war into the news.
>
> Twice I've seen "disappeared" used as a transitive verb in quotes in the =
> Seattle Times without any explanation or reason. It seems more difficult =
> to use "disappear" this way and add the quotes than to say "make someone =
> disappear," so I'm puzzled by this use. An example can be seen in the =
> Washington Post as well =
> (
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/vatican-defends-pope-francis-a=
> gainst-argentina-dirty-war-allegations/2013/03/15/d4a11e3c-8d90-11e2-9f54-=
> f3fdd70acad2_story.html)
>
> -----
> But questions about the activities of Bergoglio from 1976 to 1983, when =
> a military dictatorship terrorized much of Argentina and =93disappeared=94=
>  thousands of its own citizens, remain a cloud over his papacy=92s =
> otherwise bright early days.
> -----
>
> I assume this comes from Spanish. Here again, though, nobody is being =
> quoted, either in Spanish or Latin.
>
> Wiktionary claims a transitive meaning of "disappear" =
> (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disappear) with a 1973 Heller citation, =
> and provides desaparecer as the Spanish translation (though =
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desaparecer#Spanish doesn't provide a =
> transitive meaning, it could just be incomplete).
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA=
>
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