Verbing weirds language? (Calvin and Hobbes) Have you never pocketed your change before buttonholing a friend? Or handed anyone a plate of food? Fingered the goods on display? Headed a team? Shouldered a burden? Skirted a problem? Collared a criminal? Boxed up a gift? Grassed on a mate? Leafed through a book? Booked a holiday? Holidayed abroad? Housed a guest? Shelved a topic?
In journalese, phenomena constantly "mushroom" or "balloon". In the 18th and 19th centuries, bankrupts were “gazetted” – their names were published in a gazette. Disgraced army officers were “cashiered” – the cashiers kept the amount they’d paid for their commission.
Some people despise verbings (where a noun begins to be used as a verb) on principle, though who knows what they say instead of "texting". (Steven Poole, Guardian)
Journalist Lucy Kellaway doesn't like: "To effort", "to potentiate", "to future", "to language" and "to town hall". Global managing editor of Reuters news agency Simon Robinson disagrees: Australia must be the only place in the world where the word "cruel" can be a verb. This wonderful inventiveness should be more widespread.
Every time you use “impact” as a verb, an angel loses its wings. (@blakehounshell)
I'll cascade this down to my team. (@markoshea75)
I marathoned the entire box set.
Has this patient been clerked in?
Don’t worry, we can expense our lunch.
These mountains have already been summited by the Incas.
We need to foreground the problems.
Bill's been bowler-hatted. (Demobbed.)
She's not the weekending type.
I don't want to spoiler the plot.
I journal every day.
I can’t stomach it!
Eyeball this!
We were winched on board, while the containers were craned onto barges. (“Hiab” – a make of cranes – is also a verb.)
She pursed her lips.
He’s due for a handbagging.
She hot-footed it to the off-licence.
She’s still stressing about the party.
Like this T shirt I thrifted yesterday?
Flinders Island farewells dirty diesel.
The new CEO was parachuted in.
Ski-ing and skating are almost as popular as bicycling.
We'd better cart the shopping home.
I'll Uber my way to the rendezvous.
You can’t bubble-bath out of a depressive mindset. (@igtsoy)
We are actually proof-of-concepting that at the moment. (via BBC News, re running ships on ammonia)
Kay Birley empty-chaired James Cleverly – she interviewed his chair when he didn’t turn up.
Someone on Facebook uses “large white bearded male” as a transitive verb. Nice!
You can't barrier out a problem. (June 2019)
I want to get something I can shabby chic. (French Collection)
High pressure is ridging in. (Weather forecast)
These things shouldn’t just be cotton-woolled in museums. (Antiques expert Philip Serrell)
Prozac totally blands you out. (Dom Joly)
Was I weirding again? (Twitter)
Meghan megawatted through the whole thing. (Times 2018)
He jealoused on her. (Unsolved Mysteries)
I’ll mental-note them. (Charles Hanson on Antiques Road Trip)
The Disappeared are people believed to have been abducted, murdered and secretly buried in Northern Ireland. (Wikipedia)
Nowadays one’s supposed to say debbing was ghastly, but it wasn’t like that for me. (Julian Fellowes on the London debutante season)
This Victorian mansion in Cheshire has been footballered out of all recognition. (Meaning that the interior has been stripped of panelling, cornices and fireplaces which have been replaced by modern, “luxury” style.)
The 116th Congress gavelled into session Thursday swathed in history, returning Nancy Pelosi to the House speaker’s office. (AP)
We’ll better the environment outside the walls of the farm. (Welsh farmer moving to a remote island. But isn’t “better” for “improve” a ghastly Americanism?)
Brilliant news - really fantastic development from a great developer. Shows the importance of good clienting skills! (@RachelAFisher)
The Brighton Criteria have been obsoleted by the 2017 Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome nosology. (@H2OhTwist)
What happened here was that the parents made a massive fuss about the child being selected for a pat-down screening - which wasn't a random screening, but because the child's laptop had failed an explosives trace screen. Then after failing to middle-class their way out of the screening, they insisted on calling police officers to watch, and filming the screen. At which point the screener did a very careful full screening by the book and frankly I can't blame him. (via Facebook)
We invited the Prime Minister to publish the third direction – redacted, summarized or gisted as appropriate. (Millie Graham Wood, legal officer at Privacy International)
If you want to moan about language change, why not whinge about nouning? Turning adjectives into nouns is a current fad.
A glimpse into just a few of the moments where Extraordinary happens.
Undo My Sad (Sweden’s Eurovision entry)
Find your happy at Rightmove.
The Science of Stupid, For the Love of Odd. (Cable programmes)
Welcome to delicious.
We have an ask to make. (Dominic Raab)
Amazing starts here.
More here, and links to the rest.
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