Author Topic: word suggestion: reair  (Read 724 times)

TRex

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word suggestion: reair
« on: February 13, 2019, 06:39:36 AM »

Alan W

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Re: word suggestion: reair
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2019, 03:13:51 PM »
The Wiktionary entry that TRex links to gives the following two meanings:

Quote
1.    (transitive) To broadcast (a television programme, etc.) again.
2.    (transitive) To air or let forth again.
        to reair one's grievances

I couldn't see it in any other dictionary.

I think I would write it as re-air if I were using it. The string of three vowels in reair looks a bit too odd. Evidently other people agree: the News on the Web corpus has 16 instances of reair and its inflected forms, and 540 instances of re-air and its inflections. Strangely enough, I couldn't find the hyphenated version in any dictionary.

Nevertheless, adding re to the front of the verb air is a valid construction, and yields a meaningful word, which some people have used. It's mostly used in the rebroadcast sense. E.g. "The subject of Saturday's 'Four Sides of the Story' special, which reairs Monday at 7 p.m. on CBS Sports Network..."

An example of the other meaning was in the Irish online newspaper Extra.ie in March, where a photo of Michael Jackson is captioned, "Jackson died in 2009 but child sex abuse allegations against are now being reaired."

I'll add reair, reaired and reairing as rare words.
Alan Walker
Creator of Lexigame websites

TRex

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Re: word suggestion: reair
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2019, 07:48:30 AM »
Thanks, Alan. Re-broadcasting a television show is the only way I've heard/seen it used.