Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 14:19:26 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: bonified (was: Headramps/rights)
From Daniel Long dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]JOHO.OSAKA-SHOIN.AC.JP
1004.2055
[...]
The longer I am in
Japan, the more of these strange "Japlish" words I find are not "Japlish"
at all, but in fact bonified English words that, for whatever reason
(changes in time, areal usages, etc), just simply not in use when and
where I grew up.
I've seen this reanalysis before. Here's my take on its history:
(1) The origin is Latin "bona fide" (four syllables in Latin, roughly BO-nah
FEE-day) 'in good faith'.
(2) The phrase got repronounced by eye, from people reading the
spelling out by English rules and getting, roughly, BO-nuh FIED.
(3) This pronunciation then got respelled by ear, from people hearing it
and identifying the termination "uh-FIED" as the past participle of a verb
ending in "-ify", such as "identified", producing this spelling "bonified".
Daniel, have you ever used the word in any other form, such as "bonify"
or "bonifying", or heard it so used? Do you have a sense of what it
would mean?
Mark A. Mandel : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/