"ovenable"

[Rich Ulrich]

I bought a prepared meal from my grocery store a few days ago.

The top and bottom of the plastic container were separately
embossed with the message that the container was
'microwavable' but not 'ovenable'. Perfectly intelligible.

The -able converts a verb to an adjective. Is there a special
name for this form? It seems sort of like a verb's participle
used as an adjective, except that it is hypothetical.

To me, 'oven' is almost impossible as a verb, and yet I don't
mind this 'ovenable' which is the adjective derived from it.
That puzzles me. Maybe I would like it less if not for the
immediate parallel with microwaving.

I wonder if the problem with 'oven' as a verb is that there are
so many other verbs that we already use for cooking.

--
Rich Ulrich

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <mqmnfhhc9quemu9kc...@4ax.com>,

Rich Ulrich <rich....@comcast.net> wrote:
>I bought a prepared meal from my grocery store a few days ago.
>
>The top and bottom of the plastic container were separately
>embossed with the message that the container was
>'microwavable' but not 'ovenable'. Perfectly intelligible.
>
>The -able converts a verb to an adjective. Is there a special
>name for this form? It seems sort of like a verb's participle
>used as an adjective, except that it is hypothetical.

Well, the general form for such a derivation is de[POS]al [POS], so
that's a "deverbal adjective" or a "denounal adjective". There are of
course also denounal verbs and deverbal nouns, as well as deadjectival
verbs and nouns. Of course there are a wide range of affixes that can
be used for this in English, not to mention the common zero
derivation.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[Jerry Friedman]

On Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 2:16:17 PM UTC-6, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <mqmnfhhc9quemu9kc...@4ax.com>,
> Rich Ulrich <rich....@comcast.net> wrote:
> >I bought a prepared meal from my grocery store a few days ago.
> >
> >The top and bottom of the plastic container were separately
> >embossed with the message that the container was
> >'microwavable' but not 'ovenable'. Perfectly intelligible.
> >
> >The -able converts a verb to an adjective. Is there a special
> >name for this form? It seems sort of like a verb's participle
> >used as an adjective, except that it is hypothetical.

> Well, the general form for such a derivation is de[POS]al [POS], so
> that's a "deverbal adjective" or a "denounal adjective". There are of
> course also denounal verbs and deverbal nouns, as well as deadjectival
> verbs and nouns.

...

Yes, except that it's usually "denominal", not "denounal". I suppose
there's "deprepositional" too, as in the before and after pictures.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Peter T. Daniels]

Well, that one's called "zero derivation" or "conversion."

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 14:15:31 -0400, Rich Ulrich
<rich....@comcast.net> wrote:

>I bought a prepared meal from my grocery store a few days ago.
>
>The top and bottom of the plastic container were separately
>embossed with the message that the container was
>'microwavable' but not 'ovenable'. Perfectly intelligible.
>
>The -able converts a verb to an adjective. Is there a special
>name for this form?

Terrible.

[Ken Blake]

On 16 Aug 2022 20:03:30 GMT, r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)
wrote:

>r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>"verb+<-able>=adjective" does not imply that every word
>>ending in "<-able>" was created that way. For example,
>>"knowledgeable".
>
> I asked my computer to print a list of words that might be
> composed of <noun> + "able". He came up with the following
> list.
>
> (I did not read the following list, so I have not excluded
> /obfuscated words that might be deemed offensive!)
>
>"accessable", "actionable", "advantageable", "aspectable",
>"breathable", "carriageable", "deskable", "detentionable",
>"disadvantageable", "disrespectable", "disserviceable",
>"exceptionable", "fabricable", "fictionable", "finable",
>"finallyable", "firstable", "fissionable", "fortable",
>"fractionable", "giftable", "graphable", "habitable",
>"iconable", "impressionable", "improperable", "ionable",
>"kingable", "knowledgeable", "marriageable", "mattressable",
>"medicable", "merchantable", "miserable", "nameable",
>"networkable", "nullable", "oathable", "objectionable",
>"ovenable", "peaceable", "personable", "pleasureable",
>"princeable", "prognosticable", "raisonable", "razorable",
>"redoubtable", "referenceable", "retrospectable",
>"reversable", "rustable", "salable", "saleable", "scionable",
>"scriptable", "scrollable", "sillable", "sirable", "solable",
>"sonable", "targetable", "teatable", "tenable", "threadable",
>"ticable", "treasonable", "tunable", "viceable", "violable",
>and "writable"


You left out "fuckable."

[Rich Ulrich]

Yeah, the ones where the noun isn't also a verb tend to be
unhealthy looking. Even though 'rust' is a good verb, 'rustable'
looks bad.

In my vocabulary, 'teatable' has nothing to do with teats. And
I spell it with a hypen.

--
Rich Ulrich

[Rich Ulrich]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 20:16:13 -0000 (UTC), wol...@bimajority.org
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:

>In article <mqmnfhhc9quemu9kc...@4ax.com>,
>Rich Ulrich <rich....@comcast.net> wrote:
>>I bought a prepared meal from my grocery store a few days ago.
>>
>>The top and bottom of the plastic container were separately
>>embossed with the message that the container was
>>'microwavable' but not 'ovenable'. Perfectly intelligible.
>>
>>The -able converts a verb to an adjective. Is there a special
>>name for this form? It seems sort of like a verb's participle
>>used as an adjective, except that it is hypothetical.
>
>Well, the general form for such a derivation is de[POS]al [POS], so
>that's a "deverbal adjective" or a "denounal adjective". There are of
>course also denounal verbs and deverbal nouns, as well as deadjectival
>verbs and nouns. Of course there are a wide range of affixes that can
>be used for this in English, not to mention the common zero
>derivation.
>

Thanks.

So 'ovenable' might be a denounal adjective, with an unusual
choice for the suffix of a noun, or it is a deverbal adjective for
a verb that exists mainly by inference.

--
Rich Ulrich

[Quinn C]

* Stefan Ram:

> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>"verb+<-able>=adjective" does not imply that every word
>>ending in "<-able>" was created that way. For example,
>>"knowledgeable".
>
> I asked my computer to print a list of words that might be
> composed of <noun> + "able". He came up with the following
> list.

I have to wonder how the computer expressed his male gender in the
process.

--
I used to think the scary part about getting older was dying,
and it turns out that the scary part of getting older
is young people.
-- Sam Fox, Better Things S01E06

[Peter Moylan]

On 17/08/22 04:15, Rich Ulrich wrote:

> I bought a prepared meal from my grocery store a few days ago.
>
> The top and bottom of the plastic container were separately
> embossed with the message that the container was
> 'microwavable' but not 'ovenable'. Perfectly intelligible.

If you have a microwave oven, put it only halfway in.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

A problem with "deadjectival" if one hasn't seen in before is to
analyse it as "dead-jectival", which makes little sense. A mishy-phen,
therefore.
--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On 16 Aug 2022 20:03:30 GMT

r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> >"verb+<-able>=adjective" does not imply that every word
> >ending in "<-able>" was created that way. For example,
> >"knowledgeable".
>
> I asked my computer to print a list of words that might be
> composed of <noun> + "able". He came up with the following
> list.
>

> (I did not read the following list, so I have not excluded
> /obfuscated words that might be deemed offensive!)

I find teat-able quite offensive.



--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

Coffeet able rays!

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On 17 Aug 2022 10:28:42 GMT
r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

> Rich Ulrich <rich....@comcast.net> writes:
> >In my vocabulary, 'teatable' has nothing to do with teats. And
> >I spell it with a hypen.
>

> Yes, I used a rough algorithm that was not fine-tuned to
> exclude such cases.
>
> Speakers sometimes take some liberties with morphological
> rules.
>
> For one example, the adjectivizer "-ic" can be used to
> create adjectives from nouns. "Alcohol" gives "alcoholic".
>
> But today, people sometimes reanalyze the "-holic" as a
> suffix for "addict" and create words like "workoholic",
> "choco-holic", or "shopoholic"!
>
>

Clickoholic?

[HVS]

On 17 Aug 2022, Stefan Ram wrote

> Rich Ulrich <rich....@comcast.net> writes:
>> In my vocabulary, 'teatable' has nothing to do with teats. And
>> I spell it with a hypen.
>

> Yes, I used a rough algorithm that was not fine-tuned to
> exclude such cases.
>
> Speakers sometimes take some liberties with morphological
> rules.
>
> For one example, the adjectivizer "-ic" can be used to
> create adjectives from nouns. "Alcohol" gives "alcoholic".
>
> But today, people sometimes reanalyze the "-holic" as a
> suffix for "addict" and create words like "workoholic",
> "choco-holic", or "shopoholic"!

Indeed - but while "xxx-oholic" makes sense given the original
"alcoholic", I think the usual spelling in the wild of the majority
of those words ends with "-aholic" rather than "-oholic".

"Chocoholic" is probably more common than "chocaholic", but it's a
special case given that the second-syllable "o" exists in the root
word. Where that's not the case, I'm fairly certain that the "a"
spelling outnumbers the "o" spelling -- workaholic, shopaholic, etc.

--
Cheers,
Harvey

[Sam Plusnet]

On 17-Aug-22 1:00, Quinn C wrote:
> * Stefan Ram:
>
>> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>> "verb+<-able>=adjective" does not imply that every word
>>> ending in "<-able>" was created that way. For example,
>>> "knowledgeable".
>>
>> I asked my computer to print a list of words that might be
>> composed of <noun> + "able". He came up with the following
>> list.
>
> I have to wonder how the computer expressed his male gender in the
> process.
>

Particularly when all the external connectors take the form of sockets.

--
Sam Plusnet

[Jerry Friedman]

On Wednesday, August 17, 2022 at 5:09:54 AM UTC-6, HVS wrote:
> On 17 Aug 2022, Stefan Ram wrote
> > Rich Ulrich <rich....@comcast.net> writes:
> >> In my vocabulary, 'teatable' has nothing to do with teats. And
> >> I spell it with a hypen.
> >
> > Yes, I used a rough algorithm that was not fine-tuned to
> > exclude such cases.
> >
> > Speakers sometimes take some liberties with morphological
> > rules.
> >
> > For one example, the adjectivizer "-ic" can be used to
> > create adjectives from nouns. "Alcohol" gives "alcoholic".
> >
> > But today, people sometimes reanalyze the "-holic" as a
> > suffix for "addict" and create words like "workoholic",
> > "choco-holic", or "shopoholic"!

That "today" has been going on for some decades.

> Indeed - but while "xxx-oholic" makes sense given the original
> "alcoholic", I think the usual spelling in the wild of the majority
> of those words ends with "-aholic" rather than "-oholic".

True in books.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=workaholic%2Cworkoholic%2Cshopaholic%2Cshopoholic&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cworkaholic%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cworkoholic%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cshopaholic%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cshopoholic%3B%2Cc0

https://tinyurl.com/s4e7p2y5

--
Jerry Friedman

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 8:00:37 PM UTC-4, Quinn C wrote:
> * Stefan Ram:
> > r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> >>"verb+<-able>=adjective" does not imply that every word
> >>ending in "<-able>" was created that way. For example,
> >>"knowledgeable".
> > I asked my computer to print a list of words that might be
> > composed of <noun> + "able". He came up with the following
> > list.
>
> I have to wonder how the computer expressed his male gender in the
> process.

He's Stefan's computer, so he has German grammatical gender.

[Paul Carmichael]

El Tue, 16 Aug 2022 19:52:04 -0400, Rich Ulrich escribió:

> Yeah, the ones where the noun isn't also a verb tend to be unhealthy
> looking. Even though 'rust' is a good verb, 'rustable'
> looks bad.

As English gets absorbed by other european languages, you will eventually
have to accept anglicised versions of:

"inoxidable" (unrustable)
"hornear" (to oven. They haven't accepted "horneable" yet, but it will
come and then you will have to accept "ovenable".)

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es/elpatio

[GordonD]

On 17/08/2022 11:28, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Rich Ulrich <rich....@comcast.net> writes:

>> In my vocabulary, 'teatable' has nothing to do with teats. And I
>> spell it with a hypen.
>

> Yes, I used a rough algorithm that was not fine-tuned to exclude such
> cases.
>
> Speakers sometimes take some liberties with morphological rules.
>
> For one example, the adjectivizer "-ic" can be used to create
> adjectives from nouns. "Alcohol" gives "alcoholic".
>
> But today, people sometimes reanalyze the "-holic" as a suffix for
> "addict" and create words like "workoholic", "choco-holic", or
> "shopoholic"!
>
>

In the same way that "-gate" is applied to a noun to denote a scandal,
based on the Watergate affair (which of course was the name of the
building where it took place; nothing to do with water of any kind).
--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

[Peter T. Daniels]

Except that the office-and-residential complex The Watergate is
on the banks of the Potomac River. The developer did not conjure
up a name out of thin air.

[lar3ryca]

Well, what about the power connectors on laptops and various
peripherals? With both mating parts having male-like and female-like
parts, would the two parts be considered separate genders, or just one?
What would their letters be?

And of course, most importantly, what would their pronouns be?

--
Yeah, Windows is great... I used it to download Linux.

[Quinn C]

* Peter T. Daniels:

I do hear similar sentences from colleagues whose native tongue is e.g.
French or Romanian.

--
We shall never believe in things (even if this belief is based
in a so-called eternity), which can become a means of oppression.
-- Hedwig Dohm (1876), my translation

[Hibou]

Le 16/08/2022 à 19:15, Rich Ulrich a écrit :
>
> To me, 'oven' is almost impossible as a verb [...]

The OED traces it back to 1596 with the sense "to shut up as in an
oven", which it marks "rare" ("Above me the cottage was roaring like a
furnace. And I was entombed. Ovened" - 1977).

For the sense "To cook in an oven", the first quotation is from 1688 -
"A Jannock [leavened oat loaf]... is Ovened very soft."

[phil]

This household uses 'dishwasherable" to describe items that can be
washed in a dishwasher. One of us coined it, but I doubt we're alone. It
started out as an adjective but is now also a noun, normally plural --
"have you got any dishwasherables in here?". 'Dishwasher safe' is, I
think, the way manufacturers usually put it.

[Sam Plusnet]

On 22-Aug-22 17:51, phil wrote:

> This household uses 'dishwasherable" to describe items that can be
> washed in a dishwasher. One of us coined it, but I doubt we're alone. It
> started out as an adjective but is now also a noun, normally plural --
> "have you got any dishwasherables in here?". 'Dishwasher safe' is, I
> think, the way manufacturers usually put it.

I wonder if anyone ever sued the manufacturer on the grounds that the
thing made a lousy safe?

--
Sam Plusnet

[Richard Heathfield]

On 27/08/2022 8:47 am, Stefan Ram wrote:
> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

>> But today, people sometimes reanalyze the "-holic" as a
>> suffix for "addict" and create words like "workoholic",
>> "choco-holic", or "shopoholic"!
>

> Or they take "ish" from words like "brownish" and
> create "noonish" or say "I woke up at 11 a.m. ish".

Yes, but not just "today"; both those practices have been around
in the UK for at least forty years.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

[Ken Blake]

On 7 Sep 2022 09:41:07 GMT, r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

>r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

>>|As they were taking down the tent
>
> The last sound of some words often is not realized by Bob Dylan.
> You all are aware of "taking" that can be pronounced "takin",


Yes, I've often heard that

> but "tents" also can be pronounced "tent"!


...but I've never heard that


> So I'm not sure whether
> this is "tent" or "tents". "Sand" can be pronounced "san".


...but I've sometimes heard that.

[Ken Blake]

On 8 Sep 2022 02:42:30 GMT, r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

>r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

>>|Well I heard that Hoot Owl singing

>>|As they were taking down the tent

>>|The stars above the barren trees
>>|Was his only audience
>>Bob Dylan
>
> This is a figure of speech:
>
> "The stars were his only audience."
> -> "He had no audience".
>
> (Dylan used "was", not "were".)
>
> Similarly we sometimes use "god":
>
> "Only God knows how much I suffered that night."
> -> "Nobody knows how much I suffered that night."
>
> This even works when the speaker does "not believe in" god(s)!


Many expressions with "god" in them are used by people who don't
believe in god:

God damn it.

God bless you.

For god's sake.

It's god-awful.

Oh my god!

etc.

[David Kleinecke]

On Saturday, August 27, 2022 at 1:22:55 AM UTC-7, Richard Heathfield wrote:
> On 27/08/2022 8:47 am, Stefan Ram wrote:
> > r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> >> But today, people sometimes reanalyze the "-holic" as a
> >> suffix for "addict" and create words like "workoholic",
> >> "choco-holic", or "shopoholic"!
> >
> > Or they take "ish" from words like "brownish" and
> > create "noonish" or say "I woke up at 11 a.m. ish".
>
> Yes, but not just "today"; both those practices have been around
> in the UK for at least forty years.
>

Surely the use with colors is older - reddish, etc. but I don't know
how old. I imagine things like "noonish" to be recent. So recent
one could suspect they are nonce forms.

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <99d0a47c-289c-42d7...@googlegroups.com>,

David Kleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Surely the use with colors is older - reddish, etc. but I don't know
>how old. I imagine things like "noonish" to be recent. So recent
>one could suspect they are nonce forms.

It's quite old, but younger than the suffix in general.

"-ish" for forming adjectives of nationality is the oldest use, which
is from stem Germanic. Spelled "-isc" in Old English, mutated to
"-ish" after that sound changed.

"-ish" for forming adjectives from other nouns is more recent, but
still attested in Old English forms like "cildisc" > childish. OED
notes under this sense:

In the 19th century, in colloquial and journalistic use, -ish
became a favourite ending for forming adjectives for the nonce
(esp. of a slighting or depreciatory nature) on proper names
of persons, places, or things, and even on phrases


"-ish" for forming adjectives from other adjectives, with the sense of
"approximately ~", is quite old; OED gives examples from EME -- and
these are in fact the color-derived ones David notes above. OED gives
no citations for thise sense, but dates "bluish" to ca. 1400 and
"blackish" to after 1500.

The most recent sense OED identifies is:

Added to names of hours of the day or numbers of years to
denote: round about, somewhere near (the time or period of)
(probably after earlyish, latish).

For this, their earliest citation is 1916.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Den 08.09.2022 kl. 21.43 skrev David Kleinecke:

> Surely the use with colors is older - reddish, etc. but I don't know
> how old. I imagine things like "noonish" to be recent. So recent
> one could suspect they are nonce forms.

An nGram finds examples from 1830 - very few, though.

--
Bertel

[lar3ryca]

I'm rather partial to "Oh your God!"

--
“The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking
of morality by religion.”
— Arthur C. Clarkeup.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Den 09.09.2022 kl. 21.57 skrev lar3ryca:

> I'm rather partial to "Oh your God!"

That's also very democratic. It encompasses many gods.

--
Bertel