gafiate
English
WOTD – 16 December 2015
Etymology
GAFIA (“getting away from it all”) + -ate
Pronunciation
- Noun: IPA(key): /ˈɡæfiˌɪt/
- Verb: IPA(key): /ˈɡæfiˌeɪt/
Noun
gafiate (plural gafiates)
- (dated, fandom slang, science fiction) A science fiction fan who has become inactive in the fandom community.
- 1962, J. Baxter, Xero:
- Westlake's piece is so reminiscent of the old days of fandom, when no gafiate felt he had actually departed until he had alienated everybody on his mailing list.
- 1993 October, It Goes On The Shelf, number 10:
- Herman Stowell King, a long-time gafiate (we first met in the 60s) and collector, turned up in the local Sunday paper with a well-written review of Whitley Streiber's The Forbidden Zone.
- 1996 November, Hooper, Andy, “Walking into Midnight”, in Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, number 10, page 37:
- Perhaps the disappearance of the vast majority of the copies Dan mailed out in 1981 granted him limited immunity; he did just run for TAFF and win last year, hardly the act of an over-the-hill gafiate.
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Verb
gafiate (third-person singular simple present gafiates, present participle gafiating, simple past and past participle gafiated)
- (dated, fandom slang, science fiction) To leave the mundane world and enter the science fiction fandom community.
- She gafiated the moment she first picked up a pulp magazine.
- (fandom slang, science fiction) To drop out of fandom community activities, with the implication of "getting a life".
- 1959, Eney, Richard "Dick" Harris, Fancyclopedia II:
- QUANDRY (Hoffwoman) The famous fanzine published by Lee Hoffman of Savannah Ga. before she gafiated for the first time.
- 1976 November, Warner, Jr., Harry, “In One Lustrum and Out the Other”, in Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, number 6, page 11:
- He was quite active in the 1940's, vanished for a long while, then reappeared in the 1960's to put out lots of issues of this fanzine with the help of his wife, only to gafiate a second time as abruptly and totally as anyone ever has quit fandom.
- 2003 December 3, Marian Rosenberg (brucianna), “Re: Fandom”, in alt.polyamory, Usenet, message-ID <4VPxb.514513$6C4.365955@pd7tw1no>:
- And I didn't so much gafiate as move to Asia.
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Coordinate terms
- fafiate
Derived terms
- degafiate
- ungafiate
Related terms
- GAFIA
- get away from it all
In other languages:
- kabei
References
- “gafiate” in Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Oxford University Press, 2007, →ISBN, page 74.
- gafiate v. at the OED Science Fiction Citations Project