# Grammer/English Nazis....a moment of your time for my Daily Brainfart. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 27, 2005, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471 "2005-03-27T17:16:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/1 "2005-03-27T17:16:12Z")
**Naked** is to be without clothing. nekkid is to be without clothing online 🙂 It is always in this form, I’m guessing, past tense ( if that is what I am looking for) as I have never heard it in it’s **Nake** tense. It’s been a long long time since I had to know past, present, whatever and I think I have successfully blotted out those horrid, horrid memories of diagramm/phing a sentance. by The Nuns! This word has been bothering me for awhile and I was actually surprised to find that **Nake** is a word. To make naked. Has anyone ever actually used this word? Read it? Or is it archaic? Are there any other words out there that are only used in past tense format? ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/2 "2005-03-27T17:37:24Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > **Naked** is to be without clothing. nekkid is to be without clothing online 🙂 > > It is always in this form, I’m guessing, past tense ( if that is what I am looking for) as I have never heard it in it’s **Nake** tense. It’s been a long long time since I had to know past, present, whatever and I think I have successfully blotted out those horrid, horrid memories of diagramm/phing a sentance. by The Nuns! > This word has been bothering me for awhile and I was actually surprised to find that **Nake** is a word. To make naked. > Has anyone ever actually used this word? Read it? Or is it archaic? > > Are there any other words out there that are only used in past tense format? Naked is an adjective describing a condition. _I.e_ bare or without coveriing, unadorned and so on. As such it doesn’t have tenses. “Nake” would be someone’s back formation into a verb that none of the dictionaries I have recognizes. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/3 "2005-03-27T17:43:33Z")
According to the _Oxford English Dictionary_ (full edition), the verb “nake” is obsolete. It had both a regular transitive sense: > [@](#): > > **1** _trans._ To make naked (lit. and fig.); to lay bare, uncover, strip; to deprive (a person or thing) of something. and a transitive, reflexive sense: > [@](#): > > **2** _trans._ (_refl._) To make oneself naked; to divest oneself of clothes, weapons, etc. The last quotation the _OED_ has for sense 1 is from 1887, and the last quotation for sense 2 is from 1533. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/4 "2005-03-27T17:46:05Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > According to the _Oxford English Dictionary_ (full edition), the verb “nake” is obsolete. It had both a regular transitive sense:and a transitive, reflexive sense:The last quotation the _OED_ has for sense 1 is from 1887, and the last quotation for sense 2 is from 1533. So then, nake the verb precedes naked the adjective. Interesting. So that means that “naked” is a past participle of “to nake”, sort of like “agèd”. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/5 "2005-03-27T18:00:33Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > So then, nake the verb precedes naked the adjective. Interesting. > > So that means that “naked” is a past participle of “to nake”, sort of like “agèd”. That’s what I get for being lazy and not going clear upstairs to get my compact OED. That says that “nake” is “based directly on the adjective.” The ealiest citation for the adjective “naked” is in 850. The earliest for “nake” is 1320. It also happens that “naked” is the pp for “nake” but that’s just an artifact of the way pps are formed. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/6 "2005-03-27T18:05:30Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > So then, nake the verb precedes naked the adjective. Interesting. > > So that means that “naked” is a past participle of “to nake”, sort of like “agèd”. **David Simmons** has it right. “Nake” is a back-formation, derived from the adjective “naked.” Use of “nake” as a verb seems to have been pretty rare, if the date chart for quotations in the OED is any indication. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/7 "2005-03-27T19:42:03Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > “Nake” is a back-formation, derived from the adjective “naked.” > > . Thanks…I understood none of it. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/8 "2005-03-27T20:20:08Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > Thanks…I understood none of it. > > 😃 Did you mean you don’t understand what a back-formation is? It’s simply the creation of a word, usually from a longer word, and then people assume that the newly-created word is actually the original. Perhaps i can explain it best by quoting from Bryan Garner’s _Dictionary of Modern American Usage_: > [@](#): > > Back-Formations are words formed by removing suffixes from longer words that are mistakenly assumed to to be derivatives, most commonly when a _-tion_ noun is shortened to make a verb ending in _-te_—e.g., from _emotion_ comes _emote_. You see, you assumed in the OP that the adjective “naked” had somehow originated from the part tense or past participle of the verb “to nake,” but in fact the opposite was the case—“naked” came first, and then someone decided to make a verb out of it. Some back-formations (verbs based on nouns or adjectives) enter the language quite easily, and are now in common usage. Garner gives examples like _diagnose_ (from diagnosis), _donate_ (donation), and _resurrect_ (resurrection). Other back-formations, usually of more recent origin, tend to be considered jargon or plain bad grammar by some grammarians. Garner gives _liaise_ (from liaison), first used in the 1920s, as one such example, saying that it “is still stigmaitzed as being cant or jargon” by many people. On the other hand, when discussing _surveil_, Garner says that it is a “relatively new, and decidely useful, verb corresponding to the noun _surveillance_.” The first use of this verb in an American court can apparently be traced to 1960. Of course, as a lawyer as well as a lexicographer, Garner might be predisposed to approve of back-formations that apply to his own profession. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/9 "2005-03-28T04:39:50Z")
As a spelling Nazi as well as a grammar Nazi, I’d just like to mention that there is no E in grammar. ---
**Author:** ![AwSnappity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a3d4f5/32.png) [@AwSnappity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AwSnappity)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/10 "2005-03-28T05:04:17Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > **Naked** is to be without clothing. nekkid is to be without clothing online 🙂 But what about nakey? _What about nakey?!_ ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/11 "2005-03-28T06:46:58Z")
I’d rather be naking. ---
**Author:** ![bashere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@bashere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bashere)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammer-english-nazis-a-moment-of-your-time-for-my-daily-brainfart/296471/12 "2005-03-28T14:02:33Z")
Coincidentally, there is a recent [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=308793) in which my misunderstanding of back formations is corrected, and other examples are given.