Talk:incent

Does anyone have access to an Oxford dictionary? I am not sure this is a word or should be a word in the English dictionary and might simply be an stem root without being a complete word. — This comment was unsigned.

I have access to the citations in the OED. They included modern use of "incent" and "incented". So does COCA's database of 400MM words from 1990?-2009. We aspire to have all attestable words that are in use. People probably use "incent" because it has half the syllables of incentivize/ise. In any event they use it in many of the ways that verbs are used. Lots of folks didn't like the verb incentivize/ise either. DCDuring TALK 01:26, 11 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

The usage notes for this word and "incentivize" disagree; they can't both be used relatively more.

'Incent' appears to be a highly doubtful word, at best business jargon. As far as the back-formation goes, however, note that 'incentive' was an expansion from a verb form, and thus 'incent' could be defended as creating a verb by returning closer to the root rather than expanding further away from it with 'incentivize.'178.42.115.170 15:15, 22 September 2014 (UTC)Reply