is "obligated" a word?

[hatwoman]

because I don't think it is and I see it a lot in legal-ish docs and it really gets on my nerves. The word is surely "obliged" no?

An illegal back-formation, iirc, was the term Fowler used to describe the process of forming a shorter word from a longer, when an even shorter synonym already existed.

CHIEFLY U.S.! ha!

I love the idea of an illegal back-formation.
I hope there is statutory punishment?

we need Habbibu here - I think she has access to the full OED which would give us chapter and verse.

LGP, I have never heard that term before but thank you for the definition, it's interesting! Though I would be interested to know whether his rule only applies to neologisms (which obligated is not - it dates back at least 2-300 years), or if he proposes retrospectively applying it to all terms in the language (in which case there would be an awful lot of pruning. You could make a case for many if not most verbs and adjectives having been formed from a noun and having a possible synonym)

although the length grounds would exempt most of them, thinking about it...

(sorry, stuck in waiting for a delivery and pondering this question in far too much detail!)

Sorry I wasn't very clear. What Fowler meant was the formation from a noun of a new verb form when there was a shorter original verb form already existing. So not just any synomn. In this case you have the verb to oblige creating the noun obligation from which is then derived the "illegal" verb form obligate.

Aargh - synonym

Aaargh - wrong name. Bollocks.

oh I see, so like burgle, burglarize, burgarlization etc?

Your wish is my command, tyv!

[< classical Latin obliat-, past participial stem (compare -ATE suffix3) of obligare OBLIGE v. Compare earlier OBLIGATE adj.
With the past tense forms oblegat, obligat and the past participle obligate compare OBLIGATE adj.]

1. trans.

a. To bind (a person) morally; to put (a person) under moral obligation; to constrain, compel, oblige. Usu. in pass. with infinitive. Now chiefly N. Amer.

One of those words that went over on the Mayflower, I suspect, and then got lost here. Like gotten.

Much obliged.

wow, as if by magic

If it's a word, than I'd like someone to tell me how to pronunciate it.

It's a contrivication, 'obliged' bastardified.

In short: T'aint English, Americanized or otherwized.

The word is: Oblige.

My etymological dictionary (OED) doesn't list it at all. At best, I'd say legalese.