Talk:back-
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This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
Prefix. Sense: Situated, located, or toward the rear; backward or in reverse; in return; again.
The words using this purported prefix would seem to actually be compounds formed from back#Adverb. backbite is from back#Noun (ahistorically, anyway). (deprecated template usage) backfriend might be from the other, unchallenged sense of back-. DCDuring TALK 02:28, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, if we remove the first sense, leaving only the second, wouldn't that cause confusion? Especially for words like (deprecated template usage) backfill? Leasnam 04:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- What about backformation, backdating, and others like them, indicating reversal in time? bd2412 T 04:34, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- All of those seem to be formed by compounding of the adverb to me. Is everyone really sure that even the "backfriend" instance is not a compound. Does "back" have a similar extended meaning to that sense of "back-" with the same dialectal distribution?
- How is it less confusing to suggest that back- is a prefix? We could always remedy the "confusion" by adding a usage note or directing users to back#Adverb in some way analogous to
{{&lit}}. DCDuring TALK 13:50, 1 September 2011 (UTC)- (deprecated template usage) back-friend doesn't seem to be limited to the sense of "false friend". Some scholars seem to think it is derived from back#Noun and spell it without a hyphen. A synonym would be shoulder-clapper, "arresting officer".
- I believe this may be another etymology (not shown at the entry), where backfriend = "a friend who's got your back". Quite the opposite meaning to false friend. Leasnam 16:57, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- Are there any other instances of a term derived using "back-" in the sense of "false"? There may be another way of avoiding all this confusion. DCDuring TALK 14:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- I would say that backdate implies not only putting an earlier date on something, but in some cases doing so for purposes of falsification. For example, an author might backdate a manuscript in order to claim that his writing came before someone else. bd2412 T 19:07, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- But it isn't the back- part of the word that carries that meaning. The word backdate means merely "to put an earlier date on"; the fact that people often do so for fraudulent reasons isn't part of the meaning of the word, and certainly isn't part of the morphology of the word. —Angr 20:12, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- I would say that backdate implies not only putting an earlier date on something, but in some cases doing so for purposes of falsification. For example, an author might backdate a manuscript in order to claim that his writing came before someone else. bd2412 T 19:07, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
- (deprecated template usage) back-friend doesn't seem to be limited to the sense of "false friend". Some scholars seem to think it is derived from back#Noun and spell it without a hyphen. A synonym would be shoulder-clapper, "arresting officer".
- What about backformation, backdating, and others like them, indicating reversal in time? bd2412 T 04:34, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, if we remove the first sense, leaving only the second, wouldn't that cause confusion? Especially for words like (deprecated template usage) backfill? Leasnam 04:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- Kept as no consensus. — Ungoliant (Falai) 15:31, 13 August 2012 (UTC)