Disappeared as transitive

[Ben Zimmer]

OED has transitive "disappear" from 1897, and it has the relevant sense with
reference to Latin American political abductions (after Sp. "desaparecido")
from 1979. I reproduced the citations in this Language Log post:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3652


On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 7:36 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>
>> 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).
>>

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