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https://medium.com/the-cellar-door/the-wild-and-crazy-world-of-cutthroat-compounds-80184f79776a>
"What do you call someone whose vices include being a cutpurse, a pickpocket, a
skinflint, a tattletale, a fussbudget and, more generally, a do-nothing,
lackluster scofflaw and scapegrace? Well, I’d argue we’ve already called this
person enough names, but what’s interesting is that each of these little bits
of slander is a surprisingly rare and rather wonderful type of word known to
linguists as “agentive and instrumental exocentric verb-noun compounds” — and
to people who prefer things to have nice names as “Cutthroat Compounds.”
There are only about 30 Cutthroat Compounds (“Cutthroats” for short) used in
common English, but the originator of the term — a historical linguist named
Brianne Hughes — has collected more than a thousand rather wonderful rarities
that have fallen out of (or never made it into) common usage."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
