Word Court
Atlantic, The, May, 2002 by Barbara Wallraff
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Bonnie Lewellyn, of Hayward, Calif., writes, "In recent months a puzzling word has reared its head once again: surveil . When I first heard it used, a few years ago, I assumed that the speaker was simply coining a new form of the word surveillance , as in 'We set up a team to surveil the suspect's house.' The correct usage, I assumed, would be 'We set up a team to survey the suspect's house.' I see, however, that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary accepts the word surveil as a 'back-formation' of surveillance .
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Are there any other back-formation words in common usage, and are they considered acceptable in standard English?" Yes, indeed. Back-formations are newer, shorter words created by stripping away affixes (usually endings) from words that entered English with their affixes firmly attached. For instance, baby-sitter came to us in that form, and the verb baby-sit was derived from it. ...
