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aborning: msg#00005

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: aborning

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The Word of the Day for April 6 is:

aborning \uh-BOR-ning\ adverb
: while being born or produced

Example sentence:
"Similar proposals in 1999 and 2001 died aborning in
Congress, but in May the Judiciary Committee passed this bill
on to the Senate floor...." (_Editor & Publisher_, July 14,
2003)

Did you know?
"Aborning" is a native of U.S. soil; its arrival is marked
in the early 20th century dialect of the rural South, and it
quickly found its way to the crowded cities and towns of the
industrial north. (We don't know exactly when it was conceived,
but it came to the attention of the editors at Merriam-Webster
in 1916.) "Aborning" combines the prefix "a-," meaning "in the
process of," and "borning," a dialectal word
meaning "birth." "Borning" itself is simply the gerund, or noun
form, of the verb "born," a dialectal term that was used by,
among others, William Faulkner: "The talk... went here and
there about the town, dying and borning again like a wind or a
fire." (_Light in August_, 1932)





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