A subhead for a recent New York Times story about the audit of a federal department read, "Auditors declined to opine on the agency's financial numbers."

"O the Times! O the Customs!" emailed one of my readers, slyly alluding to Cicero's lament, "O Tempores! O Mores!" He asked, "Is 'opine' even a word?"

You bet it is, and a darn old one at that. "Opine" first appeared in English during the late 1500s, meaning "to express an opinion." In 1656, a London newspaper noted, "They, whose brain is of a thin and hot constitution, opine rashly."

Wow! A brain that's "thin and hot." They really knew how to hurt a guy back then.

You might assume "opine" is a backformation from "opinion," but in fact it descends from the Latin verb "opinari" (to have in mind, to think). Thus, the subhead meant that the auditors received so little information on the agency's finances that they couldn't express an opinion on its fiscal health.

Which brings us back to backformations. They're words formed by dropping of the suffix from a noun to form a verb.

Some of these truncations have bloomed and flourished with little objection, e.g., sculpt (sculpture), donate (donation), beg (beggar), peddle (peddler) and resurrect (resurrection).

But others remain tiny seedlings that never fully blossomed, e.g., attrit (attrition), enthuse (enthusiasm), emote (emotion), burgle (burglar), aggress (aggression).

Generally, a backformation fails to thrive for one of three reasons:

No. 1: It duplicates an already existing word. Why do we need "attrit" when we have "weaken" and "diminish"?

No. 2: Its meaning is vague. How exactly does someone "enthuse"?

No. 3: It sounds ridiculous. "Burgle." Enough said.

Let's apply this three-point test to three recent backformations:

— "Concess," meaning "to make a concession." For example, a retail executive recently wrote about giving in to customers' demands, "Around here the talk periodically focuses on what we can concess." Hello? The word is "concede."

— "Conversate," meaning "to have a conversation." It's a favorite of lawyers on Court TV, e.g., "My client never conversated with the accused." Ever hear of "converse"?

— "Evanesce," meaning "to be evanescent," that is "to vanish, disappear." A recent essay in the New York Times noted that, when we devote our full attention to something, "past disappointments and future worries evanesce."

Here "evanesce" conveys just the right feeling of dissipating like a vapor. It's a backformation I can back.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Photo credit: Marek Studzinski at Unsplash