Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Verbing nouns drives me crazy!

I'm the cranky old fart in the 'A' Ottawa & The Valley newsroom who rails at young reporters and newswriters about things like using the wrong word, misspelling, misprounciation (including pronouncing pronunciation as "pronounciation") and many other things. I've even been referred to as being pedantic (look it up).

What really tightens my colon -- but not my semi-colon -- is verbing nouns, as Calvin and Hobbes call it. That is, using words like transition, reference and access as verbs.

Today, I thought of a couple other nouns that are commonly used as verbs: party and beer, as in "When we were partying and I finished a beer, I hollered over the music to you, who were standing near the fridge, and said 'Yo, Dude! I gotta dead soldier over here. Beer me!'"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's really nothing about that imaginary dialogue that isn't colon-tightening. You have to stop going to these loser parties, Bob. Having said that, however, I think you blogged about this before...or someone did... and I always have a problem with people resisting new word usages. English is a living language and used by people with a wide variety of demographics -- they all influence the language. Some in good ways, some in what could be argued, are not so good ways. BUT, a language that isn't constantly evolving, changing and growing dies (e.g. Latin, Ancient Greek, etc.)

Bob said...

I understand your point, XUP, but let's move the language ahead, not behind. And Ma is right about spelling being one of those ways of moving it ahead.

And yes, I have ranted on my blog about such things before: MY BLOG! Get it?
;)

Anonymous said...

Yes, sir! Hey rant about anything you want. I wasn’t suggesting you shouldn’t.

Anonymous said...

I stopped correcting people. Well, at least in my spare time. I do correct people's grammar for a living since I'm a teacher.

Not being a native speaker, I don't want to pick on English speakers too much. But someone explain me since when "scheduler" and "canceller" are verbs in French???

(found your blog in the Ottawa Start listing, I like reading locals ;) )