[Ads-l] WOTD

[Chris Waigl]

Where would you put the stress on this? imPOSsibilates? imposSIbilates?
might for ever have imPOSsibilated?

On Thu, Sep 9, 2021 at 4:14 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> > On Sep 9, 2021, at 8:02 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Quora.com:
> >
> > "The weight also would impossibilitate moving it to the front with
> trains."
> >
> > JL
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth.”
> >
>
> Some precedents per the OED, including a royal one:
>
> 1633   T. Adams Comm. 2 Peter (ii. 14) 921   It [sc. covetousness]
> impossibilitates the entrance into heaven.
> 1646   King Charles I Let. in T. Carte Coll. Orig. Lett. (1735) III. 452
>  I..would do nothing to impossibilitate ayde [printed adye] from thence.
> 1834   R. Southey Doctor II. 116   How many accidents might for ever have
> impossibilitated the existence of this incomparable work!
>
> The Quora poster was likely not in direct line to the throne.  Or, unlike
> Southey, a poet laureate (albeit one mocked by Lewis Carroll).
>
> Speaking of precedents—one wonders whether the coinage of this verb was an
> item in the regicides’ bill of attainder against the ill-fated Charlie.
>
> LH
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu

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