hakase

joined 2 years ago
[–] hakase@lemm.ee 25 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)
[–] hakase@lemm.ee 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It seems that you nailed it.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Ah, yep, you're absolutely right, it is "burglarize" that gets y'all riled up. That's what I get for going off memory and not checking my sources. I've edited my comment above to point out the error.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 56 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (8 children)

Damn, Poe's Law hittin this comment hard, and I can't tell from the instance either.

Edit: oh Jesus, they were serious. Parody truly is dead. At least we get to publicly shame the stupid misandrist.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Oh wow, I'm feeling very whooshed at the moment. Sorry about that.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 17 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

From your biased, subjective point of view that has nothing to do with the objective facts of language, maybe.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Nope, I can do this all day. Other fun examples of backformation off the top of my head are: "to burgle" from "burglar" (which the Brits still get mad about (note: this is incorrect, see conversation below)), originally from the Latin agent noun burglator from the verb burgare; and "cherry", backformed from Old French cerise, which was reinterpreted as a plural (even though it wasn't one), and then a new singular form was backformed. The same thing happened to "pea" (though that's a native English word) - you can still see the original "pease" in the old nursery rhyme: "Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in a pot nine days old".

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 49 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (19 children)

"Edit" and "access" also weren't originally verbs. Same with "babysit" and "eavesdrop". Backformation and category changing are common and perfectly natural processes in English.

Edit: This isn't directed at the OP of this comment chain, but I'm always surprised by the crazy amount of ignorant prescriptivism I see all over Lemmy. Like, I expected that shit on Reddit, but I thought we were better than that here, especially since literally the only real reason for prescriptivism is sowing class division and excluding people for not having access to the secret knowledge of "correct" (yuck!) grammar.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

My thoughts exactly.

[–] hakase@lemm.ee 39 points 6 months ago

He's not wrong

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