8.0012 Q: Philological Explanation (1/17)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sun, 15 May 1994 20:43:42 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 8, No. 0012. Sunday, 15 May 1994.

Date: Sun, 15 May 1994 18:30:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: "James O'Donnell" <jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
Subject: neologism

I have coined a new verb, and seek advice on its philological
explanation: waht shall I call it? Those who use WP for Windows will
know that when you "save" a file that you are working on, it adds to the
top line of the screen, after the file name, the message "unmodified", so
you know that you are working with something that is already on disk in
exactly this form. So today, writing something fairly important, as I
got up to go to check on my laundry, I found myself asking myself this
question: "Oops, did I unmodified that file?" I looked at the screen,
and I was satisfied: I had unmodified it. N.B. the three principal
parts of this verb are all identical, and its meaning may not be
correctly inferred from its etymology or morphology.

Jim O'Donnell
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu