A G&S takeoff by Randall Munroe:
In the midst of this:
A BA in communications guarantees that you’ll achieve
A little less than if you’d learned to underwater basket-weave
with the verb underwater basket-weave, backformed from the synthetic compound underwater basket-weaving.
(Hat tip to Peter Korn on Google+.)
The back-formed verb basket-weave is itself very common. A typical cite:
Learn To Basket Weave!
If you always wanted to learn to basket weave, (or are interested) now, here is the place. (link)
Two-part back-formed verbs are incredibly common (see here and here). Some sightings just since September:
speed-date, carbon-date, catwalk ‘perform the walking-the-cat bicycle or motorcycle stunt’, dogwalk, track change, home-eat, home-make ‘make at home’, page-turn, fault-find, course-correct, ice-sculpt, binge drink, smoke-jump, legal observe, ritual bury, recess appoint, pleasure read, pinpoint-strike, monkey-spank, saber-rattle, comfort eat
plus data mine and related verbs here and insider-trade here. I have hundreds in my files.
May 7, 2012 at 6:58 am |
I’m not sure what I think about being accused of stamp-collecting while suffering from methyl acetate narcosis.
May 7, 2012 at 7:03 am |
+1 for the Pratchett quotation. Though I feel hurt he didn’t mention linguistics; we have so much to peeve about.