It starts with an ordinary noun source and an ordinary verb sustain and eventually works its way to the adverb sustainably as a modifier of a verb source, strikingly in the split infinitive construction to sustainably source, which Wilson Gray reported in an ADS-L posting on the 11th, citing a General Mills ad in which to sustainably source oats figures prominently.
Archive for the ‘Back formation’ Category
Environmentally responsible derivation
November 13, 2017Another prohibition on tipping
July 4, 2017Yesterday’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 services
(3) overbalance or cause to overbalance so as to fall or turn over
and provided a joke sign prohibiting cow-tipping. There are of course also NO TIPPING signs, usually in restarants, prohibiting gratuities.
Now Benita Bendon Campbell reminds me of NO TIPPING signs in the UK that often baffle American visitors because they appear along roads, in places where gratuities would seem to be irrelevant. There are variants that show that a third verb tip is at issue here, one related to the
noun tip: British a place where trash is deposited; a dump. (NOAD2)
1 Bizarro, 2 Bizarro
May 25, 2017
On the boulevard of broken dreams with Kip Noll
March 26, 2017(There will be plain-talking discussion of men’s bodies and sexual practices of several kinds, so this is not for kids or the sexually modest.)
The boulevard in question is Sepulveda Boulevard (my morning name for Friday), part of which is a piece of the Pacific Coast Highway, the locus of William Higgins’s 1981 gay porn flick of that name (PCH), starring Kip Noll. Meanwhile, what we know of Noll’s life involves a substantial career in all kinds of sex work, including a lot of work as a dance hall boy, that is, a male stripper for men, and almost surely work as an escort for men, that is, as a male prostitute or stud hustler — two occupations that fit senses of the label gigolo (originally the masculine version of a French term for ‘dance hall girl’, and then ‘prostitute’). Which brings us to “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, a song that refers to “gigolos and gigolettes” — male and female prostitutes — strolling on a Parisian boulevard. (This is in France, and in a pop culture fantasy, two places where hustlers and hookers are regularly construed as picturesque rather than socially dysfunctional; a similar example, the movie Gigolette, is to come below.)
These investigations wil eventually take us to picturesque locations in Spain (where the Sepulvedas come from) and also to “the dark, underground world of a New York City gigolo”, as presented in Michael Lucas’s penis-heavy gay porn flick Gigolos (2007). A long distance from the sunny surfer beaches of southern California, but Noll eventually danced his dick off (and probably sold it as well) on the mean streets of New York.
Lukas is back!
November 13, 2016(Underwear and raunchy innuendo, with a jock harness bonus, and some language stuff, but, yes, men’s bodies, so not to everyone’s tastes.)
The latest Daily Jocks offering, with my caption:
(#1)
Lukas and the Back Alley Boys
Return this week for a
Short engagement,
Featuring old favorites
— “Butt Up, Baby”, and
Fresh stuff
— “Pullin’ My Pants Down For You”,
Soon to be released on their
Ballsy new album
Silly Love Songs
binge-bingeing
May 7, 2016The wonderful creation of Pierce in Zits:
binge-bingeing is the PRP form of a verb to binge-binge, which is an instance of one or the other of two different compound V constructions of the form to N + V, whose semantic and pragmatic differences are small enough to ignore here.
to shape-shift
January 23, 2016Jonathan Lighter on ADS-L yesterday, under the heading “Re back-forming again”:
This past Monday’s Supergirl had someone explaining that Martian J’onn J’onnz had “shape-shifted” to get into Maxwell Lord’s technofortress.
Yes, this is an example of a 2pbfV (two-part back-formed verb), but not at all a remarkable one; to shape-shift was an early item in my inventory of 2pbfVs, and examples of the verb are very thick on the ground. But the subject is entertaining, so I’ll play with it a bit.
Rabble, rouse yourself from this pastoral torpor!
January 22, 2016Larry Horn, posting to ADS-L yesterday:
Haven’t encountered “to rabble-rouse” before, although I’m sure it’s widely attested. Here’s an interesting one in the wild, though, from George Wallace’s daughter, arguing that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who — after gaining fame some time ago by commissioning a monument of the Ten Commandments and posting it in the state judicial building, is now engaged in a crusade force Alabama probate judges to ignore the federal mandate on marriage equality (or, as he probably terms it, sin):
… George Wallace was able, by virtue of his office, to take political advantage by publicly promoting a theology of discrimination, but Roy Moore cannot. George Wallace was not confined by a code of ethics that restricted his right to rabble rouse, but Roy Moore is. (link)
Plenty of occurrences of to rabble-rouse and a few of rabble-rouses and rabble-roused, and rabble-rouse seems to be in WNI3. Not in my list of 2pbfVs (two-part back-formed verbs), but now it will be in entry #140.
The family that fund-raises together
January 17, 2016From 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 people on the campaign mailing list are getting requests for donations from George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barbara Bush, George P. Bush and Columba Bush [Jeb’s father, brother, mother, son, and wife, respectively]. The family that fund-raises together stays together.
Collins chose to use the 2-part back-formed V (2pbfV) fund-raises rather than the phrase raises funds, and (though a fair number of people, including some language critics, are deeply hostile to 2pbfVs, as unnecessary innovations) in my opinion that was an excellent choice: fund-raises describes an activity that is more unitary, and more specific, than raises funds. There’s a distinction here that’s come up on this blog several times, and there’s also a general principle at work, a principle I’ll call Structural Tightness.
New Year’s 2pbfv crop
January 3, 2016Two items on ADS-L with two-part back-formed verbs. One has old friends recently in the news, the other has a verb new to my files, but similar to some I’ve collected.