Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Back-formations come in several flavors. Recently I’ve been posting on two-part back-formed (2-p b-f) verbs; a list of these postings is given below, for your reference. But there are also:

simple back-formed verbs (like incent);

nouns back-formed from nouns in -s, with the -s interpreted, ahistorically, as the mark of the plural (kudo);

other back-formed nouns (taxon, from taxonomy);

adjectives back-formed from negative adjectives by eliminating a negative prefix (couth);

other back-formed adjectives (gullible).

Back-formed verbs are hugely more numerous than the other types.

The list:

AZ, 8/22/08: To gay marry:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=519

AZ, 11/2/08: Early/absentee vote (the verbs):
 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=795

AZ, 4/5/09: scuba dove?:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1296

http://arnoldzwicky.org/2009/06/08/child-rear/

http://arnoldzwicky.org/2009/06/08/todays-two-part-back-formed-verb-inventory/

http://arnoldzwicky.org/2009/06/09/back-formings/

This entry was posted on June 13, 2009 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Back formation, For reference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.