Marion Harris gave a talk at 1985 Portland (Fireworks and Salmon) Usenix about the unapologetic use of such verbs. Grep uses the “gr” as in grasp, grope, grab, etc, similar to the “sl” in slither, slider, sleek, etc. She gave a linguistic term for such things, and I remember a word like “sythesim”, but that’s not it. ches