Verbing

7 July 1999 @ 6:37 | Posted in » Language

Verbing is the process of turning a noun into a verb.

gridlocked
From AP wire story, Huge crowds gridlock Indonesian capital in support of Megawati, 28 May 1999:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Huge crowds peacefully gridlocked the capital again in a push to make opposition figure Megawati Sukarnoputri Indonesia’s next president.

straw-manning
From Bob Lieblich, alt.usage.english newsgroup, 8 May 1999:

At least some branches of this sort of thread inevitably degenerate into straw-manning, among other phenomena.

worst-case it
From the Washington Post, 29 April 1999:

Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has coined a verb: Before plunging into the fog of war, “you should worst-case it.” Let us do so.

dialogue
From Professor Capasso, Rowan University, 27 April 1999 6:19pm:

“You don’t have an opportunity to dialogue . . .”

tasked

We have tasked the secretary-general of NATO . . .

–Prime Minister Tony Blair, 25 April 1999, Meet the Press

If I were tasked with drafting the statute, . .

–Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz, 12 April 1999, National Press Club

trashcan or trash can

The trash can is still there, but if you have to trash can the remembered strings, what good is the fast field feature?

and then the reply from an equally challenged poster:

When you trahscan one choose, the next one appears.

comparison shop
I am currently in the works of developing my 45 mins stage and illusion show. I am doing research on illusion builders and sites on used illusions. I want to get a big list together so that i can comparison shop and all to make sure i am getting the best stuff for my show.

mothballed
Of all the issues on which the federal government defaults or disappoints its constituents, this is one of the most serious. As nuclear plants around the country age and have to be mothballed, as the storage pools and casks fill up, the problem becomes more acute.
–From The Detroit Free Press, 6 December 1998

nuking
Geez, that was over a month ago! I’ve been cleaning out folders and deleting old files, and it was just by luck I didn’t get around to nuking that one yet (in which case I’d have had to ask you to refresh my memory).

scapegoat
From Maureen Dowd’s Liberties, New York Times, 9 May 1999:

They felt the President should not be aping the Republicans and scapegoating the entertainment industry.

Reno's job, of course, is not to consider that Republican leaders might be trying to scapegoat her for their own failings.
– James O. Goldsborough, MSNBC

Woolworthed
From the xmas.com article from Newsweek, comes this most humorous verbing example. I quote here more than is needed as it explains a bit about amazon.com, a recent topic of discussion between us:

“The archetype, of course, is Amazon.com, the Seattle-based company that calls itself “the world’s biggest bookstore.” It’s certainly the richest–only three years old and yet to log a profit, Amazon’s market value is now more than $11 billion. That’s four times that of Barnes & Noble, a giant encumbered by its peculiar insistence on actually accommodating real people who walk in, touch the merchandise and carry their wares to cashiers. A merger of the two online giants of music, CDnow and N2K, has rattled the likes of Tower Records. And the Geppettos at Toys “R” Us are undoubtedly having night sweats at the prospect that eToys actually may be Us.Now everyone from Nordstrom to the Gap has started big-time Web operations, hoping to keep up with the Amazons. “If you miss this Christmas season,” says David Pecaut of the Boston Consulting Group, “you are one more year behind when next Christmas comes.” In other words, no matter how many sales per square foot a retailer logs in the real world, a failure to reach out to customers online can mean that you’re in danger of being Woolworthed.”

This is a combination verbing-eponym. Perhaps it is epo-verbing!

OK
LVT@aol.com wrote in message …

I am having a problem importing pictures into my FTM 6.0. I scan my pictures onto a disk, once in scrapbook I go to Insert picture from a file — go to the correct drive — when I OK everything it processes forever. I get tired of waiting and have to end the program.

Subordinate Claws, posted on The Grammar Lady, 3 May 1999

I just created another literary masterpiece (of course), ran Word 97′s spell-check, which OK’d everything (well, it, ah, pointed out a few fumble-fingered idiocities).