Talk:mistify

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Latest comment: 4 years ago by Kiwima in topic RFV discussion: December 2019
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RFV discussion: December 2019

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"To envelop or shroud in mist." This might be attestable though it seems rather hard to find. However, please don't blindly throw 3 citations and close it. Note that any use is very likely to be a pun on mist and mystify, i.e. cover something in mist and thereby hide it. These are therefore probably nonce words (in the same way that many people have made the I scream/ice-cream joke but I-scream isn't really a defined word, just a pun; or cereal killer, one of the first terms I ever challenged when I came to this site). I doubt you could find any use of mistify that was purely derived from mist and wasn't somehow a pun on mystify. Can you? Equinox 16:42, 8 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

cited. I don't believe it is a nonce: The OED lists this meaning as attested since the early eighteenth century (but considers it archaic). In fact, The use of "mistify" for "mystify", with no punning at all, seems extremely common through the nineteenth century, which may be a result of confusion between the two terms, where "mystify" seems a metaphoric version of "mistify". Kiwima (talk) 22:39, 8 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 00:30, 16 December 2019 (UTC)Reply