Talk:expediate

Wiktionary:Requests for verification - kept

Kept. See archived discussion of August 2008. 06:08, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Common misconstruction

Other dictionaries list this without comment, as now being a "normal" word in the English language, not an error. It certainly has been used this way in preference to "expedite" and normally is pronounced this way, in America. They are different words with different pronunciations - etymologically it may have been a misconstruction 50 or 100 years ago, but it isn't now. I think this one slipped through the cracks...it is used differently in England? I mean, is it still somehow considered an error in en-UK? --Connel MacKenzie 22:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I've heard "expediate" before, but have considered it an error, and "expedite" is definitely more common here (Northeast Ohio), as well as on Google by a factor of about 560:1. (Google isn't very good at counting, but that's a very large difference.) Of the Dictionary.com dictionaries, none includes "expediate" except for Webster's 1913, which tags it obsolete.^[1] Merriam-Webster Online includes only "expedite", though the Merriam-Webster Unabridged, which is behind a paywall, does have some sort of entry for "expediate".^[2][3] The Columbia Guide to Standard American English writes, “Expedite, meaning “to speed, hasten, or assist,” is the usual Standard verb; expediate is either a nonce word or an exceedingly rare synonym for expedite, substituting one verb-making suffix for another.”^[4] You mention that other dictionaries list it without comment; I don't suppose you have one handy? If there's disagreement among the various dictionaries, then it probably warrants a usage note to document the fact. —Ruakh_TALK 23:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I know I'm a few years late to the discussion, but gosh darn it, I want to add my two cents! It's always been my impression that 'expediate,' though fairly commonplace, is nonstandard. Random House dictionary agrees with me:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a small printing error for the standard verb expedite gave birth to the verb expediate in 1605. Isolated typographic errors are usually ignored; but this one was recorded in a 1623 dictionary and then copied and preserved in subsequent dictionaries. It has appeared from time to time in writing ever since.

It is unlikely that the word would have persisted, even sporadically, in spoken and written English simply because it could be found in the occasional dictionary. It is more likely that different speakers and writers have, over the years, reached for expedite . . . and missed. Perhaps influenced by a host of verbs with similar endings, like appreciate and mediate, and by the stress pattern of the unimpeachable terms expedience and expedient, they have created and recreated the related word expediate.

What is remarkable is that unlike other nonstandard words (for example, irregardless, anyways, nowheres ), which are primarily seen and heard in informal, less educated contexts, expediate can be found in the edited writing of reputable sources: . . .expediate the real valuation of the obstruse concept (Sir Edmund Hillary, From the Ocean to the Sky, 1980); The patients who need an expediated process . . . are the ones with high risks (Thach Nguyen, Dayi Hu, Moo-Hyun Kim, Management of Complex Cardiovascular Problems, 2007); The Defense Materials System is being operated under authority of the Defense Production Act and serves to expediate defense, space, and atomic energy programs (U.S. Senate, Hearings on Legislative Branch Appropriations for 1971).

Despite such examples, expediate has so far failed to become a standard variant and its use in circumstances that call for standard forms of English may still provoke criticism. With few exceptions, the online dictionaries that do show it describe it unequivocally as “nonstandard,” “not in use,” “obsolete,” “spurious,” or, more emphatically, “a common misconstruction of,” “an error for,” or “a worthless word for” expedite.

Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/expediate?s=t --Foolishgrunt (talk) 19:42, 11 December 2012 (UTC)