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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2013 23:34:31 GMT
I rarely believe it is a good idea to turn a noun into a verb, but I seem to be in a small minority.
I am still wrestling with the term "to access" which shows how terribly behind the times I am.
However, I heard a new noun verb on the weather report recently, talking about the heavy rain. "Be careful driving, because the roads are ponding."
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 7, 2013 1:28:13 GMT
Love your subject heading! There is something that sounds so solemnly ignorant about all those verbed nouns -- parenting, ponding, etc. Apparently some of them are old and legitimate uses, but I suspect most of the people using them don't know that. It's like "horrific", which turns out to be a real word, but which one day became the word to use instead of any number of other adjectives that would serve as well, making it trendy and annoying. I can understand creating "to text" because it was a new thing that needed a verb. That doesn't justify lazily verbifying nouns instead of developing a good working vocabulary. Thank you for making me rant.
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Post by nautiker on Apr 7, 2013 6:52:57 GMT
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Post by mossie on Apr 7, 2013 7:51:12 GMT
I love Dilbert, I guess every office had someone who would fit right in to his cartoons.
Back to the subject, I always wonder at our traffic reports when they speak about "an accident between junctions 7 and 8", and I have visions of concrete bridges crunching in to each other and scattering debris everywhere.
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Post by htmb on Apr 7, 2013 13:09:38 GMT
Nautiker, the Dilbert cartoon is perfect!
We've been hearing weather forecasters use the word "ponding" for many years now.
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 8, 2013 14:37:37 GMT
Oh yes, kerouac, in this off-year for major sporting competitions we're spared, but my teeth were grinding quite a bit last year at "podiumed" and "medalled".
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2013 22:01:54 GMT
Today on the radio, I heard that restaurants in NYC are better at plating the food than in smaller cities.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2013 11:42:28 GMT
I saw on Trip Advisor that a man had gifted his wife with a business class ticket.
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Post by mossie on Apr 15, 2013 14:56:05 GMT
Do you mean I get the wife as well as the ticket ;D ;D No thanks. I'd be worried why he wanted to get rid of her
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2013 17:20:01 GMT
Another unbearable term that I see on a lot of the travel sites concerning rail travel: "I am planning on training from Paris to Rome." "Are there any drawbacks to training it from the airport?" Etc.
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Post by nautiker on Apr 17, 2013 18:40:41 GMT
next step: verbing names ;D "[...] Why has she got so much attention if she didn't even write the bleedin' thing herself? Oh, you sweet, naive thing. It's because she was the most photogenic thing for miles around. Blond, American, sporting an appropriate yet fetching black suit and hat.You mean she basically Pippa Middletonned the funeral? Inadvertently – remember neither public celebrants, or mourners get to decide what pops in the public mind. [...]" excerpt from the Guardian's Pass Notes on Amanda Thatcher today, for full text see here: www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/apr/17/who-is-amanda-thatcher
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 18, 2013 5:06:39 GMT
You mean she basically Pippa Middletonned the funeral? I kinda like it!
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Post by nutraxfornerves on Apr 19, 2013 18:19:04 GMT
Verbing names is nothing new. Jane Austen, in Emma (published in 1815) has the heroine exclaiming against the officiousness and overfamiliarity of the vicar's new wife. Emma hopes that Mrs. Elton is not proclaiming to everyone that she & Emma are best buds.
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Post by nautiker on Apr 21, 2013 14:51:56 GMT
I have to admit that I've come to realise that there's indeed a noble tradition of verbing names, e.g. Messieurs Guillotin and Pasteur spring to my mind quickly...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2013 13:59:22 GMT
The city of Limoges has had the honour of becoming a verb in French as well -- in 1914, Maréchal Joffre confined a hundred military officers that he found incompetent to Limoges. The verb "limoger" now means to relieve any high ranking person of their office.
I can't think offhand of any other cities that have been verbed apart from Shanghai.
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Post by nautiker on Apr 30, 2013 9:08:18 GMT
there's always Essen / essen (no no, it doesn't count, I know...)
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 21, 2018 17:58:52 GMT
I have noticed on other travel forums that a lot of people "cab" from place to place.
I already don't like the word cab instead of taxi, but cabbing sounds abominable to me. Of course, taxiing has been a verb for a long time, but at least it doesn't mean to take a taxi.
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Post by questa on Oct 22, 2018 6:33:34 GMT
Uburing is being used here. Are we pizza-ing tonight?
Sorry folks, but I like this trend. Ever since I got the mental picture of a beaten up Sam Spade finally reaching his home where he 'keyed the door'. That was 50 years or so, it is not a recent development.
Since the advent of keyboard communications words have been abbreviated, omitted from sentences, replaced by a language of their own and new word forms have emerged to enable communication with the least possible key strokes.This has then passed into spoken English.
I read that as English is becoming the common language of the world, other peoples will change, add or redefine English to suit their own cultures. There is nothing the English professors can do. The "correct" language rules are out of their hands. The language is free from the prison of Fowler's subtle control and absorbing new habits in many different countries and language groups.
"I am probably taking a taxi to your house" might become 'query cabbing yours'...not as pretty but it is communication which is why language was developed from grunts.
As for verbing nouns and vice versa, they add colour and inventiveness to everyday speech
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2018 7:03:06 GMT
I'm not surprised by your opinion. Australians have been vandalising the language for more than a century.
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Post by rikita on Oct 22, 2018 12:39:18 GMT
i like it when languages are inventive and change things. depends on the word, some i like some i don't, but i like about english that you can so easily turn a noun into a verb.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2018 13:56:17 GMT
Like friending people on Facebook?
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Post by questa on Oct 22, 2018 13:56:31 GMT
Vandalising?
Forsooth, good sir. There are those who believe that the Language was in need of rejuvenation. That the old ways were stifling creative and fresh thinking. 'New blood' they cried, the poets and writers of great works. From the colonies there came a new argot, where the Cockney barrow boy and the Irish bard conversed with fallen Lords and de-frocked parsons. The country was so new and full of promise but the Language had only the old worn out words to rejoice in its newness.
The Elders of the earliest peoples taught the newest ones their languages, then wept as their words were turned against them.
From other lands came those who spoke in different tongues and the Old Language took what it fancied, twisting and playing with it, like a child with a shining toy. The New Language, sparkling with energy, returned to the grey roots of its origins. Those for whom the New Language spoke of freedom and experiment, new thinking and expression, cheer. Those in the towers of ivory still cling to the past and will not move one jot or tittle.
For those who dislike the new words and forms there is no shame. For those who like the freedom to make mistakes and take risks dance with the new ways of Language, not as vandals but free spirits.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2018 14:12:56 GMT
Actually, Helen Garner is one of my most favourite authors, but she writes mostly in standard English, even though I had to look up a few words 20 years ago (dunny...). I also bought several Australian detective novels when I was there -- I always sought out the Australian section in every bookstore I went to during my three trips there. Fascinating vandalism. (I also seek out the Singaporean literature section in bookstores every time I go to Singapore.)
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Post by rikita on Oct 22, 2018 15:57:10 GMT
well, i don't use facebook, but i don't have a problem with the word "friending". it describes something you couldn't take not too long ago, so they needed a new word for it. else it would have been a different one and people would complain about it. or they'd have taken a word that exists and people would complain that you can confuse it with the word's original meaning. or it would have had to be a phrase describing it, then they'd be annoyed at how long it is.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2018 16:34:33 GMT
It's funny which words cannot be transformed, though.
Adding a friend on Facebook or another site is called friending, but adding a new contact to one's social network is not called contacting.
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Post by mossie on Oct 22, 2018 18:53:55 GMT
And the old fashioned 'proper' English is, befriending.
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Post by lagatta on Oct 22, 2018 22:24:47 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 23, 2018 22:17:05 GMT
I think "friending" for facebook is okay -- it makes sense & is a useful slang word for a very specific activity.
Today I saw a new abuse of a noun: using the gerund form of the verb that was made from a noun as an adjective ~
The bright color of the dresser was very impacting in the room.
Sheesh!
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Post by questa on Oct 23, 2018 22:48:30 GMT
No !That sounds just plain ugly. Grammar is not only to make communication precise but to sound harmonious as well.
Once, it was uncouth to end a sentence with a preposition. Now it is almost universal.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 24, 2018 15:26:45 GMT
I think "friending" for facebook is okay -- it makes sense & is a useful slang word for a very specific activity. I'm wondering if the debate was ever settled about saying "unfriending" or "defriending" when Facebook goes bad.
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