Preservative is latin-based. So is convert, unfortunately, and quibble... "flattop isn't though.

Here's a link to an article I've just been reading about the eforts that little squit William Hague is making to turn "liberal" into a smear word in England along American lines. (The author thinks it's unlikely to work, and I agree - it's got too many non-threatening connotations.)

Tony Blair tried to do something like that that with his "forces of conversatism" speech last year - but at least he used that one accurately, to mean people who are suspicious of change, and he identified them with his selected enemies on the left as well as the right.