To threaten with divine punishment; to curse. This week's theme Back-formations A backronym is a word or phrase re-interpreted as an acronym or an initialism. With a little ingenuity, any word can be turned into an acronym (or an initialism). SOS didn't originate as an acronym. It was a distress signal for the Morse code (...---...) devised to be easily recognizable by a radio operator listening to the chatter of multiple streams of signals. It was only a coincidence that this sequence spelled SOS in Morse Code. Later, people came up with explanations for this signal such as Save Our Souls and Save Our Ship (for another example of an ex post facto coinage, see Apgar score). Just as a backronym comes later, a back-formation is a word that is coined after an existing word, though it appears the existing word was coined later. The verb to back-form itself is a back-formation. In this week's A.Word.A.Day we'll look at five back-formations. More...
Actually the word see's a lot more use when it comes to religion. Maybe we should just leave this one alone.