Obligated

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Towards more picturesque speech


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Obligated” is only a word if you have an aversion to verbs: It started out life as a verb. Fastidious draftspeople inevitably put it into the passive (I am obliged), brusquely nominalised it into a noun (I am subject to an obligation) and then inexpertly retrofitted it back to a verb again, still in the passive: (I am obligated).

For a ninja trick put it in the future perfect passive: “I shall have been obligated”.

There's a better, active, English verb: “must” which, if you are to find favour with people like me, you shall be obligated to effect the deployment of.

See also

  • The future perfect’s not what it used to be expected to be going to have been.