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Word Ways

Abstract

In "Occupational Hazards" in the February 1981 Word Ways, Richard E. Douglass suggests that various jobholders can be gotten rid of in ways more euphemistically ambiguous than simply being fired, canned, or sacked. For the most part, he plays upon the semantic properties of absorbed roots conjoined with the negative prefixes de- and dis- and shows how a nobleman would be discounted, distributed or subject to delivery and a tennis player disadvantaged or defaulted (or, we add, deserved or deduced).

In a more optimistic vein, let us ask ourselves how, using the prefix re- and the suffix -ed, we can describe the reinstatement to their jobs of the following people.

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