Verbing nouns. NewSpeak.

Ronni

Ronni

The motormouth ;)
Location
Nashville TN
Verbing is the linguistic transformation of nouns into verbs, becoming more and more common these days. Corporate America is a big perpetrator. So are millennials. Some examples:

Providing incentives/incentivize

Putting food on a plate/plating food

Engaging in dialogue/dialoguing

make a friend/friend someone

Look something up on google/google it

Show disrespect/be disrespected (dissed)

use a bookmark/bookmark a page

put the mail in my inbox/inbox a person(send a message, usually on facebook)

perform a task/being tasked

make a transition/transition to

taking action/actioning

There are so many more!!!! Some have made our language more efficient. Some are just plain weird! :(
 

Yes. I noticed this years and years ago when a soup commercial stated they had " soup that eats like a meal". Soup does't eat, lol.

Add on's are funny too. Suddenly we bake it off, change it out. We go ahead and.... (but you can't say "go ahead" before you first say take it).
 
Yes, I hate that! Especially since I have a BA in English. The one I hate most is GIFTED, not as in TALENTED, but as substitute for GIVE, GAVE, GIVEN.
My other least favorites are "moving forward" and "walk it back".
 

I was taught to say "this is different FROM that". Now everybody says "different THAN that".
And I was taught that people graduated FROM high school, college, etc. Now they just say "he graduated high school" with no from. What are your thoughts on those expressions?
 
Geezerette said:
I was taught to say "this is different FROM that". Now everybody says "different THAN that".
And I was taught that people graduated FROM high school, college, etc. Now they just say "he graduated high school" with no from. What are your thoughts on those expressions?
Click to expand...

Those things grate on my nerves, as well. I have to confess to being a bit of a grammar Nazi.
 
Geezerette said:
I was taught to say "this is different FROM that". Now everybody says "different THAN that".
And I was taught that people graduated FROM high school, college, etc. Now they just say "he graduated high school" with no from. What are your thoughts on those expressions?
Click to expand...
I agree with you Geezerette. In recent years, however, I've learned two things things that I find discouraging.

The first deals with dictionaries and "style guides". No matter what I was taught, there are so many dictionaries and style guides in the marketplace today that at least one will "authoritatively" contradict virtually anything I believe to be true.

The second deals with new words, usage, grammar, and punctuation. For a number of years the trend has been to confer legitimacy on anything if it's used often enough, no matter how idiotic it may be.

<Insert huge sigh here>
 
Tommy , you are so right about conferring legitimacy based on frequency of use. Really bugs me. I'm not thrilled either with the Dictionaries adding these new made up words, usages & slang every year; I'd like to hear about the slang & invented words being DELETED when they go out of style.
 


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