double whammy

[Arnold Zwicky]

i've pretty much lost track of this thread, but ...

On Aug 29, 2014, at 6:14 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> OK, I know we're up to the wazoo in cites of back-formed verbs.  But 
> this one (last line below) still struck me as interesting, partly 
> because it was addressed to linguists by (presumably) linguists (the 
> from line is linguist at linguist.org) and partly because of the modifier 
> involved; for me, "friendly" is not a possible adverb, so it remains an 
> adjective even when what it modifies has back-formed itself into a verb. 
> 
> ...
> -----------------------------------------------
> For those of you who have NOT registered for the conference, we would
> like to friendly remind you that the last day to register for the
> conference is September 1, 2014.

another possibility is that the writer was intending "friendlily" but reduced it to "friendly" in order to avoid the (as James Thurber once put it) the "lily word".

arnold
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