[Ads-l] "hinged"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've heard "hinged" used by one or two others in recent days.

Same context, of course.

JL

On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> I like "false positive," but the term I've most often seen is "lost
> positive." This was apparently coined back in the 1950s by one David
> McCord, founder of The Society for the Restoration of Lost Positives:
>
> http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890672,00.html
>
> The term was further popularized by William and Mary Morris (it shows up in
> their 1975 Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage).
>
> Of course, "lost" implies that the positive once was found, but as Larry
> can tell us, a lot of the positive forms are ex-post-facto back-formations.
>
> --bgz
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Geoffrey Nunberg <nunbergg at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > "This is not a hinged human being.” John Avlon on CNN, referring to…
> >
> > Like ‘gruntled,’ ‘kempt’ etc. What does one call these — just
> > back-formations? I sort of like “false positives,” but I imagine that has
> > already occurred to someone. Most things have.
> >
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>



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