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I came across this quote in an article on The Hidden Costs of Public Education (Birmingham, Alabama newspaper). The lady being quoted below is the curriculum coordinator for the state Department of Education.
"The law is clear, Brown said. "You can't charge for what is required. If they (students) are going to be prohibited in any manner from graduating or passing, then that's when they would definitely be infracting the rules," she said.
Has Ms Brown illegally verbalized a noun? I can't find a verb form of "infraction" in my MW. But since Ms Brown is a professional educator, albeit from a state not known for its cutting-edge education system, I thought I'd better check with you folks.
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Much to my surprise, my ten buck CD dictionary also has "infract" as a transitive verb. I have never seen it before,and hope I never see it again.
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Woulda fooled me, all right. Thanks, Faldage.
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hope I never see it again
Lest you think this a modern monstrosity, know that it was used by George Washington in a letter in 1798, quoted in the OED
It is either a verbed adjective(!), the adjective dating from 1593 or a back-formation from infraction from the participle stem infract- of the Latin verb infringere. Parbly you'd rather infringe. The adjective, BTW, is part of a pair of false contranyms; infract from in-, not + fractus broken, meaning not broken and infract from the past partciple infractus, as the verb noted above, meaning broken, both from the mid to late 16th c.
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fractus broken Oh! Fractured! Cool! Gee--what a lot I miss out on, by never having taken Latin. Sigh.
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Now that I think about it, infringe wouldn't really work in the original example posted by JohnH. But break would.
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"... infract from the past partciple infractus, as the verb noted above, meaning broken, both from the mid to late 16th c."
Could we posslibly lay blame on a careless monk for the medical term "infarct" meaning a "broken heart?"
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lay blame on a careless monk for the medical term "infarct"
Nope. The ultimate Latin root is from the verb farcire, to stuff.
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journeyman
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journeyman
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infracting the rules
I don't know if it's "illegal", but her "infracting" is giving me an "infarction".
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