THIS morning I heard a corporate-governance expert ask "what do compensation policies incent managers to do?" It wasn't a fluke; a little later she used incent again. The meaning is clear enough: to give someone an incentive. But where did it come from, and do we like it?

The Oxford English Dictionary answers the first clearly enough: incent is "apparently a back formation". A back-formation is one of those words invented because they seem to have been at the root of a different word. "Pease" was once the mass noun for a bowlful of little round things that you eat. Many English-speakers over time thought this was a plural count noun, though, and so pea is a back-formation. Many enter the language as successful words. Resurrect is also a back-formation, from resurrection.

The OED's first citation for incent is 1977, for those tempted to bemoan modern management speak; incent is almost as old as this blogger. Awkwardly, though, incent has a rival, incentivise. Incentivise is probably older (the first citation is from 1968). Many traditionalists don't like adding -ize or -ise willy-nilly to nouns to make them verbs, but these same types don't like back-formations either. Moreover, these are often the same people (like Strunk & White, or the editor of The Economist's style book) who tell you to omit needless words wherever possible. "To give someone an incentive" is longer than "to incentivize" and "to incent", and "incent" has the virtue of being a bit shorter.

All told, incentivise isn't going to be tripping off my tongue too often, but it's more legitimate to me than incent, and its brevity speaks in its favour. But we try to incent commenters to jump in here with little tag-questions at the end of a post, so what do you think? Incent, incentivise or to give an incentive?