Spoiler alert - Sunday Challenge rejected words

[Tom44]

I generally like to figure out the 9-letter word first.  Sometimes I can't do it in 5 minutes so just go onto the puzzle.  So there I was yesterday, fumbling through, and then I saw it.  I typed in Revocated only to see it rejected.  What?!  {Sigh - when will I ever learn to look words up first?}  I tried the one-look dictionary link.  Only one hit, and that was slang.  So, OK [shrug] and move on.  Found the 9-letter word, stuck it in, then typed in Revocate.  Rejected again!  But there are all kinds of hits on that word.  Now its true they mostly seemed to reference Webster's 1913 Dictionary and called it obsolete, but c'mon.  It can't be that obsolete.

How many of the rest of you tried revocated or revocate?  Do you think Alan should add it?

[rogue_mother]

Tom, I also tried revocate, but when I discovered that the only reference was Webter's 1913 dictionary, I just sighed, because I know that Alan quite often rejects rare words where that is the only known reference.

[Tom44]

Only known reference?  Hey, man, we knew it.  How about us as references?   

[Alan W]

The slang meaning for revocated given in the Urban Dictionary is quite imaginative - forced to change careers, presumably derived from vocation. However I place even less reliance on the Urban Dictionary than I do on the 1913 Webster's, because its contributors seem to make the words up more often than not.

The verb revocate, meaning recall, or call back, which can obviously form the past tense revocated, was identified by Webster's as obsolete in 1913, and I doubt it has become any less obsolete in the following 97 years. It is also labeled as obsolete in the OED, and all the usage examples given there are from the 1500s. Since its principal meaning is the same as revoke, it's probably not surprising that it is seldom used.

I couldn't find the word in any of the less enormous Oxford dictionaries, even the two-volume Shorter Oxford. Nor could I find any usage examples in corpora or newspaper archives.

However, I did find some examples, more recent than the 1500s, via Google Book Search. The word seems to be used sometimes by computer security specialists. It also pops up occasionally in books about the law: for example "This means that a preferential arrangement can be revocated at any time." (Nicholas Dorn: Regulating European Drug Problems, 1999). Sorry, Tom, but these examples are not enough to sway me - I think it is too rare to accept.

[Tom44]

I sent a longer reply earlier that apparently got wiped out in the connection.  Your analysis is, as usual, very complete, Alan.  I must defer to your judgment.  However, it made me wonder why I felt a word that is so little used would sound so familiar to me, so I went a-googling.  With "revocated +wisconsin -revocation" (because Google wants desperately to believe I really meant to type revocation) I actually had a number of hits.  When you look at them most involved people using the word asking about some legal right or a drivers license that had been revocated, but I also found at least one reference in a legal document using the word (recent, not archaic).  Hence, I suspect I came across the word used in a newspaper story.  This is not an argument to change your mind about inclusion, merely an attempt to justify my feeling it was a real, usable word.

Thanks again, Alan.

[pat]

Tom, doesn't the noun 'revocation' come from the verb 'revoke'? My hefty Oxford dictionary doesn't contain 'revocate'.

[Steadyguy]

Tom, doesn't the noun 'revocation' come from the verb 'revoke'? My hefty Oxford dictionary doesn't contain 'revocate'.

Yes Pat. I am sure you are right. A licence can be 'revoked'.
Also I do believe that in card games to 'revoke' is to do something naughty when not following suit. I will not even try to explain the latter. Somebody will surely explain it for me.

[Alan W]

I don't think it's in dispute that revoke is the most commonly used verb associated with the noun revocation. Tom's suggestion was that revocate is also a word, albeit one described as obsolete. My researches convinced me that Tom was right - revocate has been around for hundreds of years, and it is listed in the full (20 volumes when last printed) Oxford English Dictionary. But I wasn't persuaded that the word's been widely enough used - now or in the past - to justify acceptance in Chihuahua.