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Chris -- 2018-04-11
An interesting usage this morning on the radio caught my ear: abound as an adjective. Here’s the clip.
The dude abides and the usage abounds. It seems to me we’ve talked about putting some bounce in abound, but I couldn’t find the relevant thread this morning. Maybe here.
There’re so many hits on the web for “been abound” that I was driven to try to find a dictionary entry for abound (adj.), without success (on the web).
Last edited by David Bird (2017-12-05 10:40:51)
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David Bird wrote:
An interesting usage this morning on the radio caught my ear: abound as an adjective. Here’s the clip.
It just seems like a substitute for “abundant”, which makes sense, as “abound” and “abundant” are two forms of the same basic word.
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The question for me is, how does she understand the word abound? What is the origin of this innovation? Does been abundant sound wrong to her? Does she not know the connection between abound and abundant? Is she making a blend between around and abundant? Is she making an analogy with around? Does she or any of the hundred other users think that abound is related to bound or bountiful? Substituting verbs for adjectives just doesn’t work: he has been surround; she is redound. If you add “it is abound” to this list, it sounds to me as though there is some bounding going on.
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I just encountered this one minutes ago: The video on female ejaculation about halfway down this webpage uses “abound” as an adjective at about the 1:18 mark.
Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2017-12-12 12:13:10)
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I just found a LanguageLog post on abound from 2011. It covers some of the same ground as above, but quotes the OED to indicate that abound has existed as an adjective Out There for centuries.
As for the video you pointed us to, Dixon, it abounds in the direction of the original hydrodynamic sense of classical Latin abundÄre, to overflow, to emanate, issue, or spring forth, to flow copiously. Here’s the excerpt in question, for the faint of heart.
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