The process of turning nouns into verbs has been going on for years. “Access” used to be a thing. You’d say “the door is the access to the pub”. Now it’s something you do. You “access a file”.
I heard a bizarre promise to “geography that”. The meaning was to send it to different places. I laughed and the utterer was offended. I’m not sorry.
Every time I see a noun or adjective used as a verb I mentally compile a list of verbs that would have been more apt.
Source, for instance. You don’t “source” things. You find them, or obtain, acquire, gather, procure, locate, or trace them; any of those verbs.
Workplaces have become infected with people who declare they will “dialogue” with someone. They could talk, converse, discuss, confer, consult, or use several other (better) verbs. “Let’s dialogue over that” is a buzz phrase, I suppose.
Perhaps the problem is that we’ve forgotten the existence of thesauri. Next time you hear someone verbing badly, tell them to thesaurus their speech.
One of my most despised examples has become: “I’ll ‘after’ that”. People say at a meeting “I’ll after that”, meaning they will do it later. It is horrible. “After” is a preposition. It could be a conjunction. You could argue the case for an adverb (“I visited the place soon after”). But it isn’t a verb.
I’ve heard project managers claim they can “efficient” a process. They mean they can make it more efficient, but it probably sounds more impressive (to them and their ilk) to indulge in wanton verbing.
I suppose they think it makes them sound efficient themselves.
Often, though, when people are verbing I’m not sure they are trying to be clever. On the contrary, I don’t think they’re intelligent enough to filet out intrinsic meaning and use only the most pertinent words.
I think they don’t know how language is constructed. They don’t know the component parts of a sentence. They string words together in a vaguely meaningful order and hope for the best.
It is frightening. In a few years we’ll have a language of staccato nouns and verbs (that aren’t really verbs) thrown together. “Work after tomorrow dialogue” will replace “I’ll do that piece of work following this meeting and return tomorrow to report”.
What’s worse some robotic functionary, with not a wisp of descriptive skill or romance in his mechanical heart, will declare it a good thing to “efficient” the language like this.
Hopefully I’ll be have been funeralled by then.
Word of the week
Sclerotic (adjective)
Grown rigid or hardened with age. EG: “My sclerotic attitude to change in the language would mark me, among certain other reasons, as a poor choice of Love Island contestant.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
