As a recovering editor now working on the vanguard of the English language (aka the innerweb), I still have my relapses.
I’m not nearly as anal retentive about the use of AP style or proper grammar as I used to be. (Who has the time, in a deluge of info and under constant time crunches, to obsess over whether anal retentive should be hyphenated?) But sometimes my inner editor, in the immortal words of Billy Jack, just…goes…berzerk.
It happened on Monday,when one of our writers tried to slip “piecemeal” past me in a draft news release. The sentence read something along the lines of, “The workers piecemealed shim plates to run the length of the bridge.” Brandishing my red pen, I circled the errant noun-turned-verb and suggested she rework the sentence.
No less than 30 minutes later, though, I read in The Wall Street Journal an article about the usage of “gift” as a verb (“Especially During the Holidays, ‘Gift’ Is a Verb That Just Keeps on ‘Gifting’,” by Elizabeth Holmes, reprinted in today’s Arizona Republic). According to this story, the verbizizing (or “verbification,” if you prefer) of nouns is becoming commoner and commoner.
Holmes cites a few recent examples:
Users of Apple Computer Inc.’s popular iTunes online store can “gift” songs and albums and videos to one another. Mondera, an online jewelry retailer, pushes customers to “go ahead, gift her” a diamond. Epicurious.com, a gourmet online food guide published by Conde Nast, features an entire section labeled “Thanksgifting.” Gossip Web site TMZ.com reported actress Angelina Jolie “was gifted” a diaper bag after the birth of her daughter.
The gift-as-verb contingent have history on their side.
[T]he mutation of noun-to-verb is fairly common, according to Geoff Nunberg, chairman of the American Heritage Dictionary usage panel, which regularly surveys writers for their opinions on such issues. Milk a cow. Water the grass. Fax a document. [Or blog about nouns-turned-verbs.-ed.] Some experts estimate that as many as one in five verbs began as nouns, Mr. Nunberg says.
Oops. I guess I verbizize nouns more often than I thought. So I showed the writer this article, told her history was on her side, and encouraged her to follow her own best instincts as a writer.
I didn’t expect to run into more verbizizing on Monday, but when I turned to page 2 in our local newspaper, there was another one. In this case, a local public figure was quoted expressing her gratitude to the local university (that’s us) for granting her some space in which “to office.”
We are grateful for the invitation to office in this location, and we will work diligently to grow these relationships to the benefit of the community and the university.
Arrgghhh.
At least she didn’t say she was grateful that the university had gifted this space to her.
Andy writes! 