From the Globe and Mail: Excursionizing and verbifying.
"Bagel me, please."
My daughter wasn't asking someone to perform an extreme chiropractic procedure with those words. She was simply asking me to pass her a bagel, in emulation of Homer Simpson's, "Beer me."
Beyond that, her request signalled the movement of verbing from boardrooms and cartoons into the public domain.
And my kitchen.
Before we finished breakfasting, she had been toastered, plated, knifed and cream-cheesed.
Her verbifying didn't red flag me at the time. It was largely funning around, gaming the language. But then it hit me. Here she was, havocing the Queen's English, right in the presence of a professional writer.
For 30 some years, I have earned my living by togethering words into sentences, and verbifying is nothing new to me.
But was this mere verbification, or a signal that the language is systematically being verbicided? [continue].
This reminds me of a certain Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
Posted on February 20, 2004 08:35 PM. Filed under: language.