Partner with Verizon. Why aren't we?

Slightly clunky wording in this advert for Verizon, as seen on ComputerWeekly.com:


'Partner' is being used as a verb here, so I would have opted for 'why don't we?' rather than 'why aren't we?'.

I wonder whether the fact that 'partner' can be a noun or a verb caused some confusion. Or was the confusion over tenses: present simple ('partner') followed by present continuous ('why aren't we [partnering])?

To demagogue

A while back my colleague Sue emailed me to say:

Pres Obama referred to "demagoging" in his interview on the Today programme this morning - I haven't looked it up but surely there's no verb 'to demagogue'?

Well, I've just looked it up and not only is such a verb in fairly widespread use, but according to the OED Online, it dates back to at least 1656 (in the sense of "to play the demagogue"). It has been used as a transitive verb, meaning "to deal with (a matter) after the fashion of a demagogue", since at least 1890.

The OED does say "chiefly US", but then Obama is the US president so I'll let him off.

Photo from Flickr

Regarding 'demagoging', Google suggests that 'demagoguing' is the more widely used spelling (32,000 results as opposed to just over 4,000).

And rather bizarrely, searching Google for "to demagogue" with results limited to "pages from the UK" brings up something called JD's World as the first result. Nothing to do with me, I promise...

Verbing: I'll just missed-call you

I overheard a great bit of verbing in the pub yesterday evening:

I'll just missed-call you

(Two girls were swapping contact details. The first girl gave her mobile phone number to the second girl, who called that number and immediately hung up - allowing the first girl to get the second girl's number from the missed call.)

Back to work tomorrow, so these pub-based anecdotes will be coming to an end, I'm afraid.


PS. The cost of a pint last night: £1.60ish (it was a Samuel Smith's pub). Oh and sorry about the lack of pictures on the blog this weekend, but I've been using dial-up...

Verbing: how to social network

Recently I spotted an unusual, if ugly, example of verbing (creating a verb from another part of speech) on the front page of the Independent: "How to social network"

This is interesting because 'network' is already commonly both a noun and a verb; what the Independent has verbed is the entire noun phrase 'social network'. (Compare with 'how to socially network'.)

I suspect the Independent has verbed the noun phrase because of severe space limitations on the cover – otherwise it may have preferred something along the lines of 'guide to social networking' or 'how to use social networks'.

Hmm, I can't find any reference to 'how to social network' on the Independent Online, but here's someone else using the phrase (good article too).

Not averse to verbing

One of our charges has a habit of 'verbing' – using a noun as a verb. We don't object on principle; after all no one objects to gerunds, which are verb participles used as nouns. Recent examples dropping into the engine room include the eye-watering 'professionalising' and the less painful 'depolluting', both of which took the place of relatively clumsy clauses.

But just to keep us on our toes, yesterday the same writer came up with "a view with which we would confer".

Writers. Can't leave with 'em; not allowed to bury them under the patio.

Word of the day: diarise

Further to JD's mention of ruggedise (ugh!), today a writer came with "diarise", meaning to note a date in a diary. Fortunately those nice people who compile the Oxford English Dictionary confirm that diary is a noun which has, thus far at least, escaped being 'verbed'.

In fact "verb" is offered in the OED only as a noun so officially, at least, verb has yet to be verbed. But while the word has yet to force its way into the dictionary the practice (or in this case practise?) is widespread.

Is this a sign of a vigorous, evolving language, or simply a reflection of lazy thinking and lazy writing? I suspect the latter. This magazine, at least, is definitely not ready for verbisation, though the OED does list "verbalise" as "excessive or empty use of language"... which seems to say it all.