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#147843 - 09/12/05 10:17 AM fomite
zmjezhd Online content
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Registered: 08/13/05
Posts: 1525
Loc: R'lyeh
Fomite :- an inanimate object that transmits infectious disease agents. Back-formation from the plural of Latin fomes 'tinder', fomites. Related to faveo 'to warm, keep warm; cherish'. Perhaps related to English to bake.
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#147844 - 09/13/05 01:29 AM Re: fomite
Bingley Offline
Carpal Tunnel


Registered: 04/09/00
Posts: 3063
Loc: Jakarta
When and where did this back-formation occur? I always understood a back-formation was a (wrongly) assumed source for a word, which then became used in its own right, such as scavenger being assumed to come from a verb scavenge which did not actually exist until after a verb for the noun was thought desirable.

So, was fomites adopted into English and then fomite assumed? If so, what was fomites used to mean in English, and when did it drop out?



Bingley
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#147845 - 09/13/05 05:42 AM Re: fomite
Faldage Offline
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Registered: 12/01/00
Posts: 11418
First citation for fomite in the OED is 1859. It's a medical term, not one that was (or is) commonly used in polite brandy-and-cigars after dinner talk.
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#147846 - 01/21/07 10:20 AM Re: fomite
dalehileman Offline
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Registered: 07/10/05
Posts: 1364
Loc: Apple Valley, CA, USA
...but sounds like it ought to mean an explosive substance in frothy form; eg, so that it can easily be forced through a small opening to make, let’s say, a roadside bomb
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#147847 - 01/21/07 11:31 AM Re: fomite
BranShea Offline
Pooh-Bah


Registered: 06/23/06
Posts: 1856
Loc: Netherlands, the Hague
1. Any inanimate object (as a towel or money or clothing or dishes or books or toys etc.) that can transmit infectious organisms from one person to another.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.



"Fomite" is a common misspelling or typo for: comate, famine, finite, foliate, fomented, fomenter, omit, vomit, vomited.
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