Carl in Newport Beach, California, wonders why the prefix be- functions so differently in the words behead and befriend. Also, why do the words decapitated and beheaded have different prefixes? And what the be-doing there in bemoan and belabor? Like...
emplotment n.— «The types of stories that can be told about the French Revolution are limited to the number of modes of emplotment which the myths of the Western literary tradition sanction as appropriate ways of endowing human processes...
