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I'm looking for a simple word to use as the name of a function in a computer program that widely employs a naming metaphor. For this reason, I need a simple verb that can substitute (the instruction) "Become born."

Museful
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  • There's no common verb, mainly because most humans do not recall being born. (My wife's grandfather used to claim he did, but that's rare at best.) – Hot Licks Apr 11 '15 at 18:44
  • Note that choosing identifier names is off-topic here. – tchrist Apr 11 '15 at 18:48
  • @tchrist Thanks for notifying me. Do you mean the entire question is off-topic because of its motivation, or just that I shouldn't have given the background I did? – Museful Apr 11 '15 at 18:57
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    @Museful Avoid mentioning program identifiers and you should be fine. Note that bear is the active verb, and to be born is its passive. You should give an example sentence showing how you use this word. Programming isn’t English. – tchrist Apr 11 '15 at 19:01
  • What about deliver? Children are delivered, noun: deliverance. – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '15 at 19:14
  • Born is an English deponent verb. It only occurs in the passive, the same way beware only occurs in the infinitive. So in effect it's a predicate adjective, now spelled differently from the past participle of bear, bore, borne, and like all predicate adjectives, it takes be (and get, which is the inchoative of be) as an auxiliary verb, in present and past tenses, and every other intransitive construction. – John Lawler Apr 11 '15 at 19:14
  • to hatch ; animals are hatched; New ideas are hatched – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '15 at 19:18
  • Related: Which is the correct passive construction of 'she bore him on the Christmas day'?. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 11 '15 at 19:41
  • In the programming world aren't you instantiating? I.e., creating an instance. – Jim Apr 11 '15 at 20:14
  • @Jim We name identifiers after what they represent in application world, or may simply use metaphors to help us keep track. In my case, I am "breeding" a population of candidate solutions to an optimization problem that has a tree-structured solution-space (a little like a family tree). Sometimes I have to tell members of the population to "die". Sometimes a parent has to "lay" an "egg", at which point the new entity is initially instantiated, and subsequently "incubated" and if given conditions are met the "egg" is told to "hatch". This analogy has improved the algorithm's readability. – Museful Apr 11 '15 at 21:30
  • @Museful very good. Sounds like you have your answer. Why did you accept fall if you liked Mari-Lou's hatch? – Jim Apr 11 '15 at 21:36

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(usually for lambs) fall v.: to become born

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: Eleventh Edition By Merriam-Webster Inc.

Marius Hancu
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  • Where did you get that? Fall born lambs are lambs born in autumn, later than they'd usually be, due to artificially accelerated breeding. But "fall" as a verb meaning "to be born"... it would be groovy if that's really the case! – bobro Apr 11 '15 at 19:18
  • There's a link, isn't there? :-) – Marius Hancu Apr 11 '15 at 19:19
  • Wow, that's great, thanks! By the way, links to google books don't always work for people in other regions. – bobro Apr 11 '15 at 19:24
  • That's interesting although it isn't so useful in my case since I can't use very ambiguous words given the background. Thanks anyway. – Museful Apr 11 '15 at 19:49
  • @bobro it was a google book link to a dictionary, although a direct link to a dictionary, such as this one, def 25 seems to work for more people. (I couldn't see the google book link either, just the title of the book.) Or this one from the online M-W. – pazzo Apr 11 '15 at 21:59