Disappeared as transitive

[Jonathan Lighter]

I didn't have to search the sacred pages of _Catch-22_ to verify my memory.
Here's a valuable allusion from Justin Lieber's _Noam Chomsky_ (1975),
published shortly before the Argentine situation:

"An amusing instance of a related phenomenon is Joseph Heller's famous line
on the fate of the rebel Dunbar in Catch-22: '*They disappeared him*'— the
sentence is ungrammatical but very apt semantically..."

JL

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 2:38 AM, Benjamin Torbert <btorbert at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Torbert <btorbert at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Disappeared as transitive
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> We use disappear as transitive all the time in my family to
>
> a) Express getting some crap out of my mother's house that she doesn't know
> about the disappearance of
>
> or
>
> b) Hiding some potentially negative influence on my 3yo son.  Such as
> refined flour or refined sugar.  "I disappeared the lillipops."
>
> Whether we borrowed this usage from Argentina, I'm not sure.  Sounds
> plausible.
>
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