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sleepwalking
Heard on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, in a segment on sleepwalking: 14-year-old Miranda Kelly reporting a moment when she realized, “Oh, I sleptwalked.” That’s double inflection, on both parts...
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Brief mention: invidious incorporations 8/30/12
From the 8/25/12 Economist, “Touchable after all”, p. 32: The arrest shocked the country and foreign investors. [Vietnamese banking tycoon Nguyen Duc] Kien was one of the Bentley-driving,...
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A batch of back-formations
Three two-part back-formed verbs of interest came past me recently: an old acquaintance, to executive-produce ‘act as executive producer for’ [in film, tv, recordings, etc.]; to open carry ‘(lawfully)...
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Pre-op days
Notes on my Friday and Saturday, doing things, with the help of Elizabeth Traugott, to get ready for surgery on Wednesday. Friday afternoon at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (family practice and...
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Noun incorporation in Gayland
For some time now, I’ve been analyzing gay male porn flicks from several points of view: the construction of various gay identities, genre conventions, and so on. Every so often, points of linguistic...
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Annals of back-formation
From Jon Lighter on ADS-L, this report: CNN tells of a hockey player who “loves to hard-hit.” That’s a back-formation from the expressions hard-hitting and/or hard-hitter – synthetic compounds of a...
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buck-rake
From Maureen Dowd’s NYT op-ed column (“Can We Get Hillary Without the Foolery?”) today: She was supposed to go off to a spa, rest and get back in shape after her grueling laps around the world. But...
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Synthetic compounds and back-formed verbs: rape
From discussions of rape in recent news, the synthetic compounds slut-shaming and victim-blaming — and, no surprise, the back-formed verbs slut-shame and victim-blame. Synthetic compounds. From...
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Synthetic compounds and back-formation: go-go truth-telling
Once I start looking at synthetic compounds and back-formation, new examples pop up all over the place. Two today: the synthetic compounds truth-teller (and truth-telling) and go-go dancer (and go-go...
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Yet another synthetic compound / back-formation
… this time fitting into my gay sex postings, about the verb spit-roast. I didn’t see it for a while, because the OED seems to treat the verb as a direct compound, from N spit + V roast: ‘roast on a...
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Another OBH roundup
From Benita Bendon Campbell, three more One Big Happy strips: on questions, compound nouns, and tense in nouns. And then, as a bonus, four strips on Ruthie’s interpretations of words. The strips Bonnie...
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Brief mention: “You onion-peel so slowly”
Said by character Dani Santino to character Nico Careles in the episode “V3 for Vendetta” (7/17/13) of the cable tv series Necessary Roughness. Taking the two-part back-formation to onion-peel into...
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Annals of back-formation
Two recent contributions, of different sorts, from friends: to truck-chase and to harsh-parent. truck-chase. Victor Steinbok reported this find in ADS-L on the 3rd: Spotted on Beer Advocate Forums. As...
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pickles
Just posted on “Men and their pickles”, which brings me to (actual) pickles and (figurative, sexual) pickles. It’s well in advance of National Pickle Day (November 14th), but here’s a pile of...
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ballhawk
In the latest (October 7th) New Yorker, a Talk of the Town piece, “Dept. of Accumulation: Ballhawks” by Reeves Wiedeman, beginning: Zack Hample caught his first major-league baseball when he was twelve...
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Morphology Friday 2: back-formed freedom-fight
Today’s Doonesbury blast from the past: Start with the synthetic compounds freedom fighter and freedom fighting. From which by back-formation comes a verb to freedom-fight, of the form N + V. Which...
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PSP synthetic compounds
From Ned Deily on Facebook, this report in the Advocate of the coming-out of Lutheran Bishop Kevin Kanouse at a youth conference: Kanouse recounted the experience in a letter to local leadership, which...
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The family that fund-raises together
From a Gail Collins column “Everything’s Relative” in the NYT on the 14th, about political candidates engaging their families in their campaigns: Remember Jeb? He was going to run as his own man, but...
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Another prohibition on tipping
Yesterday’s posting on cow-tipping and related matters distinguished two verbs tip, played with in a cartoon by Daniel Beyer: (1) give (someone) a sum of money as a way of rewarding them for their...
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Household gifts
Assembled in a group photo, three pleasingly thoughtful household gifts: (#1) A penguin tea towel and a purple plant mister flanked by two hand-blown flared glasses The tea towel with penguin slogan...
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