One of 'our' occasional contributors, jackiemw (our other Jackie), appeared here again recently seeking an answer to this week's word quiz at englishconsulting.com, at which she is a stellar performer. I happened to look at last week's question:

There are only five words in English that end in -ceed. Name all five of them--oh all right, give us just three.

[continued below - DON'T read on yet if you want to have a go first.]











ec's Answer: The words of this type most commonly thought of and given to us as an answer were exceed, proceed and succeed. There are two other, less commonly known words that end in -ceed: emceed, the past tense form of the verb emcee (as in "to emcee [i.e. be an M.C. or master of ceremonies] a game show"); and glaceed or glacéed, meaning 'glossy' or 'glazed.'

I know they appear in dictionaries of sorts, but I object strenuously to the last two.

emceed. Whilst I concede the occasional spelling-out of a letter name (such as vee for the shape of a notch), I cannot countenance the spelling out of M.C. as emcee, and its verbification increases its abhorrence to me. Have any of you actually ever seen something in print like "The show was emceed by Fred Nurk"? If for no other reason, it should be struck out on the grounds that substituting 'master of ceremonies' for emcee back in the sentence makes a nonsense of it. What's wrong with "Fred Nurk was M.C. for the show?"

glaceed. Unless I am mistaken in my French (come in, bel!), glacé(e) is already the adjective/past participle in French, and hence the 'd' is superfluous and incorrect. In fact, it's a feeble attempt to verbify in English a French adjective! I haven't checked the packets, but I'm sure we buy 'glacee cherries' here. Perhaps glaceed ones are glazed(ed) twice?

As an aside, I find it interesting that the Web has made finding answers to these types of questions so much easier. The first three occurred to me quickly. To get all five I just typed *ceed into OneLook.

oh my! you don't suppose that contributes to being a 'stellar performer', do you?!

Good grief, you know our language police would be hacking away at any label that read "glaceed cherries". You are absolutely right, it is already a 'participe passé et adjectif'.

We never, ever, ever (am I being adamant enough, do you think ) add a D to our verbs to change the tense to the past. Since, in this case, it is used as an adjective I am sure you are right that it is an attempt to verbify the word (and it's not pretty). Two raspberries for the people at englishconsulting.com

I object strenuously to the last two

Me too, Mr Chook. Gratuitous abuse of the language. Or even languages in the case of glaceed.

I can just about tolerate okay as a verbification of initials made sound. But beyond that, call in the Grammar Police!

P.S. I'm sure there's a neater way of saying 'verbification of initials made sound'.
'phonetic verbification'??
tsuwm - here's one's for you!

In reply to:

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I'm sure there's a neater way of saying 'verbification of initials made sound'.
'phonetic verbification'??
tsuwm - here's one's for you!

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I'm not aware of a single word for "phonetic spelling of initials"... I'll try asking Eminem; maybe he knows.

The question being asked some years ago was, "What succeeds?"

The answer, of course, is a toothless budgie.

'verbification of initials made sound'.

How about:
Acronymic verbing
(as in to AV and too old)

A variant example:
Hand = Have A Nice Day

'verbification of initials made sound'.
How about:
Acronymic verbing

A useful term in its own right, mav.

But to be in the same category as emcee your examples would need to be
ayvee (for Acronymic Verbing/AV)
and aitchayendee (for Have A Nice Day/HAND)

The "sounding out" of the initials - as in okay - is quite a distinct feature.
And hopefully a rarity!