En réponse à Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>:
>
> Related to the English (borrowed from French, i assume) word "senile"?
>
Yep.
> > it's plain wrong according to the Acadebile: they gave everybody bad
> -
>
> Like the Spanish word |débil| (if i remember correctly) meaning
> "weak"?
>
The French |débile| is indeed cognate of the Spanish word. But in French it has
acquired the meaning of "dumb" rather than "weak".
Those two words ("mots-valise" as we say in French) are an example of a common
French wordgame. French doesn't have the compounding abilities of English, but
we like very much this kind of "word-blendings" created on the fly :)) . I've
often thought that a language that used this as a common system of compounding
would be pretty neat :)) (IIRC Lojban does it a bit).
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.