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stranger
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stranger
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I am unfamiliar with the word "vetting," and my Microsoft Bookshelf only gives it noun meanings. I gather in the caption below the author means as in "protection" or "surveillance," but it appears to me to be a use of a noun as a verb. What does anyone think? GwynneF > > > > From today's New York Times headlines email: > > > > >>Textbook Publishers Learn to Avoid Messing With Texas > Textbook battles are legendary in Texas, and the latest > round has involved a coalition of nine conservative > organizations vetting more than 150 books. > http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/29/arts/29TEXT.html?todaysheadlines <<
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hi GwynneF, from Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: 2 vet Function: transitive verb Date: 1891 Inflected Form(s): vet.ted; vet.ting 1 a : to provide veterinary care for (an animal) or medical care for (a person) b : to subject (a person or animal) to a physical examination or checkup 2 : to subject to expert appraisal or correction : EVALUATE - vet.ter noun
so it looks like definition 2 is what you're looking for. a relatively recent word, and usage, seems like.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
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Interestingly I can't find any provenance for the word. It's defined everywhere but its etymology is unexplained anywhere that I have access to.
And I can't even think of a likely derivation. This is terrible!
- Pfranz
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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A veterinarian checks your animals for disease. In his spare time he "vets" books for for suitability of contents.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well, at least in Texas, anyway.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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What wwh says is perfectly true. But I'm sure that the etymology of the word is different in each case. Has anyone got access to the grown-up version of the OED?
- Pfranz
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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vet n. short for VETERINARIAN vt. vetted, vetting [Colloq.] 1 to examine or treat as a veterinarian does 2 to examine, investigate, or evaluate in a thorough or expert way vi. [Colloq.] to work as a veterinarian
>vet2 7vet8 n. short for VETERAN
vet abbrev. 1 veteran 2 veterinarian 3 veterinary
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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this, from the WordDetective: http://www.word-detective.com/041798.html(way down toward the bottom) "Perhaps the most surprising thing about "vet" is its origin, because it seems almost too simple. "Vet," the verb, like "vet" the noun, is a contraction of "veterinarian," and to "vet" originally meant to have your animal thoroughly examined by a vet. "Veterinarian," in turn, comes from the Latin "veterinae," or cattle, which constituted the bulk of early veterinarians' patients."
formerly known as etaoin...
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addict
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addict
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everyone online has access to the oed http://www.oed.com/ ;)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>everyone online has access to the oed
yes, this is absolutely true... for a mere $550 dollar-bucks (US) per annum for an individual subscriber. a slightly better deal can be had through gratis use of a proxy server via a publicly funded network subscriber, such as your local library.
meanwhile (while everyone rushes to sign up), here's some history on 'to vet' culled from the virtual pages of OED2:
vet first shows up as a verb ca. 1891 and very soon gets applied in a general way (to a person) in 1898. but it was Kipling, in 1904, who gets credit for moving on from medical examination to investigation of a person's suitability:
These are our crowd.... They've been vetted, an' we're putting 'em through their paces.
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