On 6/16/20 5:38 PM, Jeff Smith wrote:
TLDR: "denylist" as a noun seems fine, but verbed ("denylisted") is still a bit unusual. Something like "denied" or "in_denylist" might work.
Apologies in advance for going language-geek on this...
Some of this comes down to how compound words are built. The original word was (adjective + noun) to make a compound noun. Of course, it is also commonly used as a verb.
Compounding "x" with "list" where "x" is a _verb_ has the sense of "list of things to x". I can't think of a clean rule to morph a verb from this. You could just use the appropriate tense of the root verb or use multiple words.
Still not sure why "list" needs to be in it, since I don't think we actually care about the structure. As for having the sense of a predetermined list, "ban" seems like a good choice (many libraries have a _banned_ book list). "Deny" or "reject" may imply a more subtle or complex decision process (_denied_ credit, _rejection_ letter from a job or a school).
I would love to hear others' thoughts. I know a lot of my rambling is bound to be very subjective.
While English is relatively amenable to producing new endocentric compounds, they need a space. (In other words, most people and even linguists won't think of them as compounds, but as noun phrases.) In more concrete terms, "denylist" just feels wrong; "deny list" is better.
I don't think English is very amenable to producing new verb-noun compounds. Anything of that form is going to come off as awkward.
I don't think any substitute will be as idiomatic as "blacklist"/"whitelist" regardless of construction.