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Comments on Is "pervalue" an antonym of "devalue"?

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Is "pervalue" an antonym of "devalue"?

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Devalue is commonly used to mean diminish value.

Seems like the prefix re- is sometimes used with opposite effect to de-, as in reinforce meaning to increase force or refried meaning more fried.

However, revalue does not mean to increase value.

In this situation, sometimes per- is used to connote greater intensity. I could not find pervalue in a dictionary - but is it a "valid" word?

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re- (3 comments)
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Moshi‭ wrote 7 months ago

Neither of your examples really mean to increase; they just mean to repeat something. reinforce means to enforce again, and refried fairly transparently just means fried again. It just that both of those actions are additive, and doing it again means increasing the effect. Revaluing something on the other hand is not additive.

matthewsnyder‭ wrote 7 months ago

This is wrong. Refried beans are fried only once. And you can reinforce the first time.

Moshi‭ wrote 7 months ago · edited 7 months ago

Wikipedia claims that the refried of refried beans is a mistranslation; at any rate every dictionary I've looked at says "refry" means to fry again. I should have been more careful in my wording for reinforce though, I meant to say that it is etymologically derived from the meaning of enforcing again/providing additional enforcement, though the modern meaning may have shifted as the spelling is different from "enforce" and people don't recognize it as "re-" + word but as an indivisible unit.