Turning nouns into verbs

nickwill

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the new fashion for turning nouns into verbs.
The latest cliche is where new ideas or products are 'trialled'.
TRIAL IS A NOUN NOT A VERB!
It has been happening the other way for a while. woollen goods became 'knits', and I know there are numerous other examples.
What do we have to do to resist the increasing Americanisation of the English language?

Clive Atton

I really loath people (like my brother) who say 'I'm good' in response to the question 'how are you?'. Do they mean they are well behaved? No, they mean they are WELL, so why can't they say so, morons.

It makes me sick........

ContrelaMontre

Medal - grrr.

I hate it when you hear athletes say, "I'm hoping to medal" or "I medalled in the time-trial, but didn't medal in the road race"!!

Grr. It sounds so stupid because it's wrong but also because of the verb "to meddle".

tatanab

Cycling commentator speak -
"Fred is in third wheel."

Motorcycle commentator speak -
"He's looking for a podium."

pneumatic

One of the reasons that English is a global language is that it has always been vibrant, resilient and capable of adaptation. It has been changing steadily for hundreds of years, absorbing vocabulary, shifting its sounds and spellings and, yes, growing new words out of existing ones. Even the grammar evolves and, yes, the punctuation, too.

French used to be a global language until it was strangled to death by the Academie Francaise's attempts to stop people changing it. Any attempt to do that is as perverse as trying to top a child from growing up, and the results the same.

So, much as we might get irritated by the clumsiness and inelegance of new growth in our language, there is nothing we can do to stop it evolving in these ways.

My pet favourite is the present perfect tense: I have been distinguishing it from the simple past tense correctly and pedantically for years, but I know that I am in a decreasing minority.

King Canute is a good role model in this respect and heaven knows what he would have made of the English we speak these days.

Big Red S

Nickwill wrote:

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the new fashion for turning nouns into verbs.
The latest cliche is where new ideas or products are 'trialled'.
TRIAL IS A NOUN NOT A VERB!

New?

Surely using the word 'new' like that is doing exactly what you're complaing about - changing the meaning of a word for no good reason, or using it as if the meaning had changed, when there's a perfectly good, more suitable, alternative.
Personally, I'd go with 'traditional'. It's quite rare that any development in a language more than a few years old is called 'new', especially in one as subject to change as English.

CHRISNOIR

The use of the word 'party' as a verb ("Hey man, let's party!") makes my skin crawl!

labarum

How do I respond if I ask "How are you?" and the answer is "I'm good"?

"I asked about your health, not your morals."

Sometimes it raises a smile.

But I reluctantly, and without any joy, agree with Pneumatic; and will have to put up with whatever changes are "upcoming".

ivancarlos

One that I notice is people who do not use apostrophes correctly. Also people writing 'would of' instead of 'would've' i.e. "I would of done that".

Big Red S

Surely it's 'would of' instead of 'would have'?

ivancarlos

Big Red S wrote:

Surely it's 'would of' instead of 'would have'?

Errm, no.

pedalrog

Like saying "your" instead of the correct "you are".
All thanks to the recent craze in shortening words for convenience for mobile phone text messages and the awful craze in using MSN etc.
The other annoying thing I find is the Americanisation of words using "z's". Or should that read Americanization?

labarum

pedalrog wrote:

Like saying "your" instead of the correct "you are".

"Your" means "belonging to you": the contraction of "you are" is "you're".

O dear.

CarlosFerreiro

"To hoover" would obviously be wrong.
"To vacuum" at least avoids the trademark, but is little better.
"To vacuum clean" is getting there, but imprecise.
"To clean with a vacuum cleaner" would be correct though.

It might illustrate why the noun as verb is used as a contraction though ;-)

Given most verbs have associated nouns, it would seem that this is not exactly a new process, just that the established forms of usage do not stand out the same way as changes that are still progressing.

BMCCbry

There are a lot of things along these lines that annoy me, but the most recent one is on the Argos adverts, in which they use the verb to argos sth. :x

ricadus

pedalrog wrote:

The other annoying thing I find is the Americanisation of words using "z's". Or should that read Americanization?

I believe all the major British publishers (Penguin, etc) have been use '-ize' instead of '-ise' for decades.

Mike Healey

Noun verbing is beyond acceptancing

passout

Does it matter? I would suggest not.

Mike Healey

This habit has been transportationed over from the States

Salsiccia

The one I can't stand is when people are being served, either at a table or counter, and they say 'Can I get a coffee' or so on instead of 'Can I have'. Once, I was next to somebody who said 'Can I get so-and-so' and I couldn't help myself - I said 'No, they'll get it for you'. They had no idea what I was on about...

I work in Marketing and this sort of 'American-speak' and use of 'buzzwords' is rife. The other day I was invited to a conference that was discussing taking advantage of the change in on-line behaviour; it was subtitled 'Monetizing the Paradigm Shift'. I was a bit sick in my mouth when I read it.

Salsiccia

Mike Healey wrote:

This habit has been transportationed over from the States

BTW you meant to say 'transportationized'.

ivancarlos

Salsiccia wrote:

'Monetizing the Paradigm Shift'.

You would get full marks for this in a game of 'wank word bingo'

Mike Healey

Salsiccia wrote:

Mike Healey wrote:

This habit has been transportationed over from the States

BTW you meant to say 'transportationized'.

I'm sorry, but transportationizationing is absurditying the central thesis of this thread

nwallace

pedalrog wrote:

The other annoying thing I find is the Americanisation of words using "z's". Or should that read Americanization?

Canlt remember if it was on here but in the past I quoted from a book I posses which contains reprints of a letter between a Scottish Laird and an Army MAjor.
The Army General prefers "Americanisation" where as the Laird prefers "Americanization".

The Laird was the Duke of Atholl and the Major Caulfield (or Cawfield if you are the Perthshire roads department) Both rather well educated men of their time.

Current Doric is derived from the Scots of Edinburgh at the time a Large Aberdeenshire Estate was bought by a wealthy Edinburgh man. Which was a long time before other estates were converted from Norn and Gaelic by new land owners from the South or the hereditary lairds who having lived with the people on their estates for centuries moved to Edinburgh, got caught in the lowland hatred of highlanders and went along in the belief that highlanders needed to adhere to Lowland civilisation.