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Re: TAN: new words [was: RE: LONG: Latest Wenetaic Stuff]

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Saturday, October 30, 1999, 1:37
Tom Wier wrote:
> On a related note, some Cable channel in these parts has been > advertising a new series of programs dedicated to John Wayne on > Wednesday, and call it "John Waynesday".
Well, that's more a pun than a -gate type coining. Altho it seems to me that the -gate thing started out as a pun. I believe Whitewatergate was the first, which, if so, would've been a simple pun based on Watergate. Then, once that word existed, -gate came to be a suffix. Reminds me of -peat in colloquial usage, as in "4-peat champions" ("four-time champions"). Origin: Repeat -> Threepeat (pun) Threepeat -> Fourpeat (reanalysis of -peat as suffix) -- "It has been postulated that, given an infinite number of monkeys bashing away at an infinite number of keyboards, we could eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this to be incorrect." - Anonymous http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor