[Ads-l] back-formation: to eagle-hunt

[Jonathan Lighter]

I didn't know you *could* learn to fly fish.  Other than flying fish?

Either way, I'll be darned.

JL

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 4:11 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Jan 1, 2017, at 4:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > From the film, _The Eagle Huntress_ (highly recommended except for the
> > theme song!):
> >
> > "Girls can't eagle hunt."
> >
> > Not "to hunt for eagles" but "to hunt wild game through the use of a
> > trained eagle.”
> >
>
> Like the similarly instrumental back-formed compound “fly(-)fish”, as in
>
> “Real men don’t fly-fish”
> http://www.ovictormiller.com/Real%20Men%20Don't%20Flyfish.htm
>
> or “Ten things I wish I knew when learning to fly fish"
> http://theflyfishingbasics.com/10-things-i-wish-i-knew-
> when-learning-to-fly-fish/
>
> —not “to fish for flies”, which presumably real men also don’t do.
>
> LH
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org