From my UCLA colleague Kendra Willson's Political Inflections: Grammar and the Icelandic Surname Debate, pp. 135-37:
Only some 15% of contemporary Icelanders bear surnames inherited in a fixed form. A person's first name remains his or her primary name, while the indication of whose son or daughter he or she is is viewed by Icelanders less as a name than as a secondary descriptive label. The fact that the Icelandic telephone catalogue is organized by given name is a source of wonder to foreigners and a locus of national pride for many Icelanders....
[S]urnames entered Modern Icelandic usage [starting with the 17th century].... Over the following two centuries, the assumption of surnames by members of the upper and upwardly mobile classes became more and more common....
The first official [but unsuccessful] attempt to stem the tide of surnames was a proposal presented to ... the Icelandic parliament, in 1881.... This law would have required Icelanders to obtain royal permission before adopting a surname, as well as exacting a fee of 500 crowns ... and an annual [tax] of 10 crowns per syllable of the last name.
If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street;
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat;
If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat;
If you change your name, I'll tax your [syllabic] feet.
One fellow came out, and his friends asked him what name he had been given. He replied, "Schweisshund."
"What a terrible name? Didn't you offer to bribe them?"
"What do you mean? A hundred gulden I paid for the 'w' alone!"
Q. What's the capital of Iceland?
A. About $20.
BTW, "verb" is now a verb -- meaning "to make a verb from".
What do you think all those "loopholes" are?
The English language, our language, is the only trait that separates us from the Alaskans?
The English language, our language, is the only trait that separates us from the Alaskans?
Well, sure, but it also separates us from Texans and Mainers, to mention just a couple.
The other day I tried to use "incend" for this meaning. Later on after poring over the OED, I was torn between "incend" or "incede". I think I decided that "incede" would best match the Latin root of "incentive", but that since it hadn't been reported in use as a transient verb, we'd be stuck with sentences like "Government policy caused him to incede towards the desired behavior," instead of "The government inceded him to behave as desired".
"Incend" has been used transitively, but its root (L. cendere) relates back to lighting stuff on fire, as opposed to "incede"'s root (L. cedere), which means setting the tune or pace. Maybe we can post-facto rationalize an "incentive" as something which lights the way down a certain path.
I guess this is all a long-winded way of saying, yeah, "incentivize" is pretty bad, and I don't like "incent" either. Perfectly good verbs like "incede" and "incend" are available--they've been waiting for a chance to pick up some new defintions and come back into vogue for centuries! Can't we pick one of those?
How long have "incend" and "incede" been out of date? Neither appears in the (North American) Scrabble Tournament Word List, which is a reasonably good indicator of whether something is not a real word (you wouldn't believe how many obscure/obsolete variant spellings there are that are valid words), as long as it's not hyphenated or uses an apostrophe.
(BEVOMIT? OUTYELP? MISUNION? All of them are valid words, according to the TWL -- but none of them are listed at dictionary.com as having any definitions)
For "incend", the most recent quote is from 1872:
"Incede" is marked as "rare" by the OED, and "incend" is marked as "obsolete". I wonder how long it will be till Googling for either brings us to this page...c'mon, let's get this ball rolling! Let's incede toward the use of "incede".
Higgins: An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him.
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get,
Oh, why can't the English learn to
set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.
In America, they haven't used it for years!
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian,
the Greeks are taught their Greek.
In France every Frenchman knows his language from "A" to "Zed"
The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning,
The Hebrews learn it backwards,
which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English and you're regarded as a freak.
Why can't the English,
Why can't the English,
Learn To Speak?
I fear your friend is an optimist.
I would propose a confiscatory tax on the use of the "-ize" or "-ise" suffix to coin verbs from nouns, but nobody would sympathize.
Oh, for pete's sake. Using the proper word works wonders:
Whereas here in America we never use the tax code to encourage anything.
As opposed to this business of participling every possible word?
Not that this is a good thing. I lived next door to the 'Scott-Linds'. For five long years I couldn't bring myself to introduce them to visitors.
Laws with "loopholes" are either poorly written laws or written with intentional exceptions to the law. If the authors of the law did not want the "loopholes" to exist, then they should not have written the law that way. Nobody is abusing the law by following the law to the letter.
Were the Scott-Linds brave?
I had a friend who told his future wife that she was welcome to hyphenate her name...just not with his!
1. Skipper, it'd be swell if you paid your taxes on time.
2. Skipper, if you pay your taxes on time I'll give you a free house, $100,000 in cash, and a trip to Tahiti. If you don't, I'll put you in jail.
The problem is that both #1 and #2 encourage you to pay your taxes on time. But only #2 incentivizes or incedes you to do so.
What's wrong with "befriend" ?
I can't tell whether I've been the same since, or not. But I sure don't believe any claims about the isolation characteristics of closed headphones anymore.
Not especially, from what I could tell.
What's just perfect about them, however, was that they were both of English stock. And yet they were incredibly "thrifty." Just a coincidence? Or cause-and-effect? (A test: Does anyone perchance know a married couple named 'Poe-Lind'? And are they uncommonly fearful of Germans? Now I simply must know!)