From pericles@temple.edu Sat Jun 22 10:13:37 2002 Received: from mailscan4.cac.washington.edu (mailscan4.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g5MHDZw3087788 for ; Sat, 22 Jun 2002 10:13:36 -0700 Received: FROM mxu2.u.washington.edu BY mailscan4.cac.washington.edu ; Sat Jun 22 10:13:35 2002 -0700 Received: from smtp.comcast.net (smtp.comcast.net [24.153.64.2]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.06) with ESMTP id g5MHDYJX023177 for ; Sat, 22 Jun 2002 10:13:35 -0700 Received: from temple.edu (pcp01784256pcs.audubn01.nj.comcast.net [68.46.176.188]) by mtaout06.icomcast.net (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.1 HotFix 0.8 (built May 13 2002)) with ESMTP id <0GY400MSGAIM3A@mtaout06.icomcast.net> for classics@u.washington.edu; Sat, 22 Jun 2002 13:13:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 13:15:03 -0400 From: Dan Tompkins Subject: Re: etymology To: classics@u.washington.edu Reply-to: pericles@temple.edu Message-id: <3D14B098.38E2917C@temple.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 (Macintosh; U; PPC) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: en References: <3D1472A6.B318ED23@mail.lemoyne.edu> <001601c21a09$d2aee3e0$b4cb64a8@jfgannon> Did people here the verb "incent" being used as a transitive on NPR this morning? I've already seen complaints about this seeming barbarism. But reflection uncovers at least two parallels: descant and accent, from the same root (sing not burn -- a false etymology mentioned by OED and Webster's 2nd). And we turn out already to have two existing (sort of) words that presupppose a transitive "incent": "incentor" and "incentively" (= "incitingly"). If I have this wrong I'm sure someone will point it out. But the seeming barbarism seems to be legit, in the sense of being paralleled by similar forms. Unless we're gonna say that anything we've never heard before is wrong. I am willing to bet some of us will be asked about this in the next week. Best, Dan .