Re: any intransitive verb can be transitived

On 31 Aug 2006 15:20:09 GMT, ke10@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (K.
Edgcombe) said:

I went to the doctor's surgery today, having previously made an appointment.
They have a jazzy new screen which says "To arrive for your appointment,
touch the screen". So (after a bit of trouble with the notion that I hadn't
already arrived) I touched it, and went through a guessing game about my
date of birth.... after which it displayed a list of matching names (only one
in my case), each with a touch-button beside it.

The touch-button says "Arrive me".

Has this one been seen in the wild before?

i, for one, haven't seen it before either in the wild or in
the tame.

But there are words in English that probably seemed just as
strange the first time they were used. An example that
springs to mind is "schedule". Nowadays it's normal to say
things like "Please schedule me for a examination". But
"schedule" was an English noun for a few centuries before it
was first attested by the _Oxford English Dictionary_ in the
mid-19th century as a transitive verb with a person as
object.

Maybe "appointment" will have its turn soon, as in "Please
appointment me for an eye examination on Thursday". Or
maybe "Please appoint me for an eye examination".

A related case is the word "seize" as used by medical people
to mean "have a seizure". I don't find that in dictionaries
yet, but we were assured a few years ago by at least one
alt.usage.english poster that "seize" is indeed commonly
used that way by doctors and nurses.
.

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