Find a verb ending in "ate" whose associated noun is obtained by replacing the "ate" with "ition." Is...

The poser, Timothy Y. Chow <tycchow@math.mit.edu>, wrote: "The only
solution I have to this puzzle is a somewhat obscure word."

Here's a program that doesn't distinguish between verbs and non-verbs:

#!/usr/bin/perl

while (<>)
{
        $ate{$1} = 1 if /^(.*)ate$/;
        next if ! /^(.*)ition$/;
        print "$1ate/ition\n" if $ate{$1};
}

Running this on web2 gives:

cognate/ition
comparate/ition
contrate/ition
dentate/ition
ebullate/ition
micturate/ition
noncognate/ition
sedate/ition
superstate/ition

Looks like micturate is the most common of the three verbs -- I've never
heard "ebullate" or "comparate" used in vivo.  I don't know what
"contrate" is, but contrition is from contrite, so that's not a likely
solution.

I love a language that has associative arrays as a fundamental data
type!

-- Jim Gillogly <jim@mycroft.rand.org>