Donate
An 1849 review of Bartletts Dictionary of Americanisms appears to quote from Bartlett to the effect that one or more clergymen invented the verb to donate.MWO has:Etymology: back-formation from...
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I don't know about the clergyman/men, but certainly in its first cite in OED1 (1845) it is used in inverted commas, acknowledging the novelty of the word. It is marked as 'chiefly US' and defined 'to...
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Interesting. Is this the normal pattern - the verb developing from the noun, or is it vice versa? I'd have thought the latter.
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I second aldi's response, and add that in the 19th century it was pretty common to condemn back formations generally (at least among those who enjoyed wringing their hands over the state of the...
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As to Eliza's question about the normal pattern, I don't have comparative statistics, but both patterns are common. Nouns become verbs and vice versa. If one happens more often than the other it is...
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