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

Bingley