2022-01-22 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – C - commentate & commentator

Revision C

2022-01-22

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – C - commentate & commentator

แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น 

ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค

 

Dictionary.com:

ออกเสียง commentate = “KOM-uhn-teyt”

ออกเสียง commentator = “KOM-uhn-tey-ter”

 

Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:

commentate & commentator

Since the word commentator has become well known 

because of radio and television, 

people generally have felt the need 

for a verb to describe what a commentator does. 

Thus a neologism has been born. 

The phrase “to commentate a game (or fashion show)” 

is considered dubious usage by most authorities. 

Why not stick with comment, comment on, describe, or narrate?

 

Dictionary.com:

HISTORICAL USAGE OF COMMENTATE

Since the late 18th century, 

commentate has been used transitively with the 

meaning “to annotate” and, 

since the mid 19th, intransitively with the 

meaning “to make explanatory or critical comments.” 

 

These uses are now rare.

Recently, commentate has developed 

the additional transitive sense, 

“to deliver a commentary on” 

and the intransitive sense “to serve as a commentator.”

These uses are occasionally criticized as journalistic jargon.

 

Collins English Dictionary:

Usage: The verb commentate, 

derived from commentator, 

is sometimes used as a synonym 

for comment on or provide a commentary for. 

 

It is not yet fully accepted as standard, 

though widespread in sports reporting and journalism.

 

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Word You Love to Hate

Commentate

Back-formation 

(“a word formed by subtraction of a real or supposed affix 

from an already existing longer word”) are another class of word, 

like those ending in -ize, that are broadly despised. 

 

And much like the -ize words we are selective in our disapproval; [homesick]/dictionary/homesick) (from homesickness) and escalate (from escalator) get a pass, 

while surveil (from surveillance)

and commentate (from commentator) attract opprobrium. 

 

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Words at Play

Gruntle, Burgle, and Commentates

The entertaining history and usage of back-formations

Words come to be by various methods

—breakfast and lunch beget the mash-up brunch; 

sushi gets borrowed wholesale from Japanese; 

eye begins as a noun but then gets to be a verb too. 

 

But a particularly interesting way 

we get new words is "back-formation": 

you take an existing word, 

remove a prefix or suffix, 

and voila: television (1907) becomes televise (1927).

 

Often back-formations 

(both the process and the words it produces 

are referred to as back-formations) are verbs: 

donate (1785) is from donation (15th c); 

diagnose (ca 1859) from diagnosis (1655); 

choreograph (1943) from choreography (ca 1789).

 

But they don't have to be verbs: 

the noun statistic is from statistics (1880 and 1770, respectively). 

Homesick comes from homesickness;

earliest evidence of the original 

and the back-formation date to the same year, 1756.

 

The best back-formations are a little surprising. 

Escalate, as in "letting the argument escalate," dates to 44 years 

after the invention of the escalator in 1900. 

(Escalator was originally a trademark of the Otis Elevator Company.) 

Edit dates to 1791, 

which means that the word editor (1649) existed for 142 years

before the editors had a good word to refer to what exactly it was they did. 

Eavesdropper (1487) too existed long before it was possible to admit that one was eavesdropping (1606).

 

A number of back-formations are words 

that tend to annoy people who tend to get annoyed by words: 

burgle (1870) comes from burglar (1541)

—and only a year before burglarize arrives on the scene in 1871; 

commentate (1794—a 220-year-old upstart, that one) 

comes from commentator (14th century); 

surveil (1941) comes from surveillance (1802).

 

And some back-formations seem to be in on the joke: 

gruntle is a verb meaning "to put in a good humor." 

It was coined in 1926 from disgruntle, 

which since 1682 had been meaning 

"to make discontented or ill-humored." 

The dis- in disgruntle is not the typical "to do the opposite of" dis-,

as in displease; it's an unusual intensifying dis-. 

 

But that didn't matter to the clever writer 

who first sloughed off the dis- in the mid-1902s. 

(That writer likely knew nothing of another gruntle, 

a very old and very obscure word meaning "to grumble.") 

Similarly, 

flappable (easily upset) was made in 1968 from unflappable 

(not easily upset), but the latter had only been around since 1954.

 

Back-formation can also get a little sloppy, at least lexically speaking. 

In some cases, 

the prefix or suffix that's lopped off is not in fact a prefix or suffix at all. 

 

The word pea was formed by back-formation from the Middle English word pease. 

People mistakenly thought the \s\ in pease meant that the word was plural. 

 

In fact, pease was like butter or salt:

a noncount noun at home in a phrase like "some pease" 

but completely wrong in a phrase like "many pease." 

 

But back-formation worked its magic 

and pea and its new plural peas eventually settled into 

the language like, well, two peas in a pod.