vacuum-clean
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Back-formation from vacuum cleaner.[1]
Verb
[edit]vacuum-clean (third-person singular simple present vacuum-cleans, present participle vacuum-cleaning, simple past and past participle vacuum-cleaned)
- (transitive) To clean with a vacuum cleaner.
Synonyms
[edit]Translations
[edit]to clean with a vacuum cleaner
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References
[edit]- ^ Naděžda Stašková (2013) “English back-formation in the literature”, in English Back-Formation: Recent Trends in Usage: A Comprehensive Study of English Back-Formation in the 20th and the Early
21st Century[1], Plzeň: Západočeská univerzita v Plzni, →ISBN, page 25:
- BF [Back-formation] (of the type vacuum cleaner > [to] vacuum-clean) is less obvious, but it is a diachronical phenomenon, too, even if it is highly productive and produces semantically predictable results. As soon as a verb of the type [to] vacuum-clean is formally derived by BF, it becomes semantically primary; thus, vacuum cleaner means ‘appliance designed to vacuum-clean with’; therefore, viewed synchronically, it is derived from the verb [to] vacuum-clean.