Just Curious

Please state the answer in the form of a question... Just Curious is the occassional blog of Andrew Nelson. In an attempt to balance the polemical tone of most of the blogosphere, all entries hope to pose at least one useful question. Many entries simply advance useful memes. Personal entries may abandon the interrogative conceit.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

please won't you neighbor me?

From an article in today's Trib on how Biosphere is up for sale:

A sprawling new retirement community now neighbors the facility to the south, and developers would love to snag the Biosphere 2 property for residential use

At first I was shocked that the Tribune (tho a well-known spelling innovator) would use "neighbor" this way. But apparently it can be used as a verb, according to Merriam-Webster and the American Heritage. This struck me as a modern usage (kind of like "friend me" from the facebook world), but the OED records similar usages going back to the 16th century (plus a bunch of obsolete ones meaning something like "to behave in a neighborly way.") Whodathunkit?

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