Is There a Noun That Can't be "Verbed?" 6

[hjgoldstein]

I was just looking at an article headline in Flipboard and tapped the screen to open the article. Due to a congenitally fat index finger - diets and exercise help not one iota - I accidentally tapped on the Star to the right of the headline.

I was presented with a pop-up which said:

Log In Required - You must be logged in to Twitter to favorite (sic) this item

Is there any noun in the English language that can't be turned into a verb?

It is time for pacifists to stand up and fight for their beliefs.

 

[acl03]

resort to awkward verbing

Would that be called "awkwarding"?

Thanks,
Andrew

Hard work often pays off over time, but procrastination pays off right now!

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> Would that be called "awkwarding"?
More like awkwording.

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[Olaf Doschke]

This discussion is really worth a read. It should be communcated to a wider audience.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

communicated

 

[acl03]

Star for you, Cajun. That was great!

Thanks,
Andrew

Hard work often pays off over time, but procrastination pays off right now!

 

[2ffat]

I think this has been going on for a long while, now.

Fist, Jimmy jimmied the lock. The Jimmy used a jimmy to jimmy the back door.

James P. Cottingham
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[SamBones]

This isn't an example of verbing, but it does seem to be in the same family. I was in a departmental meeting today with some very high level management and we were told that in the stores we shouldn't just be selling, we should be "solution selling". "We need to be better at solution selling our customers". "We need to get better at the solution sale". Every time I heard the phrase "solution sell" or "solution selling" I thought of this forum.

I just wondered why "sell solutions" wasn't sufficient. Or why "sell them what they need" needed a makeover.

 

[flyboytim]

It seems the Greeks (or the scholars of the language) had a word for it:

Anthimeria - to use one part of speech as another.

Verbify and verbize already exist, so "to verb" fails CCs prior claim criterion. If this were Groening's Springfield, "emverben" would be totally cromulent!

However, this is English and as such anything goes, except when it becomes too unwieldly. It could be argued that "to verb" is a cleaner and more practical version, except that the past participle, verbed, is an "awkword" in speech with the b-d conjunction.

An example of a noun difficult to verbify might be the perfectly good noun "jewellery" - a collective general term for various sparkly or precious body adornments that are not classed as clothing. In itself, the word is a bit of a mouthful, and not a good candidate for verbification. In recent times, The semantically similar noun "bling" has appeared with much greater potential for anthimeria - "blinging up baby" has a whole new meaning.

The two verbisations I detest most are "to leverage", meaning to exploit, or compound a financial advantage, and to route, not at all with the meanings, but with the "merry cans" mispronunciation rhyming with beverage and bout, instead of beaver-edge and boot.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

groups of users will always create their own lingo to shorten things. I still cringe when I hear "social security number" shortened to "sosh"

I know exactly how you feel. In New Zealand, it is common to hear "www" spoken as "dub dub dub", especially in radio and television adverts. My anger level always goes up a notch or two when that happens. It's not like saying "double ewe" is hard. I blame the Australians - they're clearly a bad influence ;-)

Dan



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[ChrisHirst]

it is common to hear "www" spoken as "dub dub dub", especially in radio and television adverts.

I think we have the usual suspects our dear friends across the pond to blame thank for that one!

Somebody called George dubyah ... something or other.

AND

Matt Cutts

Chris.

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Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
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[Annihilannic]

Heh, as Stephen Fry pointed out, "double ewe double ewe double ewe" is a very inefficient acronym; it has 3 times as many syllables as "world wide web"!

Annihilannic
[small]tgmlify - code syntax highlighting for your tek-tips posts[/small]

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Annihilannic,

very true. Sometimes abbreviations are really helpful. In the end, anything you write or talk about many times will be abbreviated or named. In our company, for example, we have a time tracking software for the our work time and that#s called Tim as in "Time is money", but it's also a normal, pronouncable name.

What brings up my anger rather are internet acronyms like AFAIK. Especially that one hides, that you are unsure about what you say. That's important to stress and AFAIK does the opposite (by the way it means "as far as I know" AFAIK).

I already stated I would rather like to appreciate things than to star or fav them.

I feel with you, but I disagree, that any abbreviation is bad. Actually that's not the main topic anyway. Here in germany the concern of language affine people are anglicisms, not only pseud-anglicisms. And I also can feel with that, but especially in IT there are really awkward words for IT terms. You will call a laptop laptop, perhaps also notebook, but not "Klapprechner" (fold computer).

For the purpose of a special term differing from the general meaning, in this case a specific term for twitter, I think it's arguable to introduce such a new word for it, as to favorite. I agree to favour is not hitting the meaning and I disagree "to add to your favorites" is feasible.

In the general case I think the verbing of nouns is quite common on the management level and annoying even more so, if combined with buzzwords.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[SamBones]

I already stated I would rather like to appreciate things than to star or fav them.

A star for that line Olaf, just to be ironic.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Really appreciated, hehe.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[philhege]

This is an oldie that still raises my hackles: "impact", as in

The feces impacted the rotating oscillator.

IT'S NOT A VERB. Repeat after me. IT'S NOT A VERB. I don't care what the online dictionaries trumpet.

Why yes, Bob the Angry Flower is my role model.

-------++NO CARRIER++-------

 

[hjgoldstein]

@philhege - Have you never heard of "Impacted wisdom teeth"?

It is time for pacifists to stand up and fight for their beliefs.

 

[guitarzan]

> IT'S NOT A VERB
philhege: Why not? OED cites literary references using impact as a verb as long ago as the 1600s! I guess my question is, is all "verbing" bad? Is old "verbing" acceptable? Have we already "verbed" all the nouns we need to?

Should we have a moratorium on all future "verbing", and only allow it when it meets the criteria CC mentioned earlier (when no verb exists to describe the action)? I would be okay with that... ;-)

 

[DansDadUK]

... when no verb [already] exists to describe the action ...

I'd be much happier with this restriction.

 

[hjgoldstein]

On the other hand, and simply to play devil's advocate for a moment, the English language is an evolving organism. Why should restrictions be placed on the development of new words, or new uses for existing words?

If, as has been stated here, it is good enough for Shakespeare to use words in a new way - or, indeed, to invent completely new words - it is surely good enough for the rest of us. I appreciate that my ramblings here will not be remembered in four hundred years - or even four hundred minutes - but I believe that the inventioning of new words keeps the language fresh and current.

It is time for pacifists to stand up and fight for their beliefs.

 

[DansDadUK]

... I believe that the inventioning of new words keeps the language fresh and current ...

I don't disagree with that at all - but the almost daily addition of new 'verbed' nouns, where perfectly good and apposite verbs (some of them shorter than the new words) already exist, does grate somewhat.