When did “effort” become a verb?
Twice in the last few weeks I’ve heard about someone “efforting”. The first time I thought I’d misheard, but the same thing was said several times more on the same broadcast (baseball playoffs). Then a few days ago I heard it again during election coverage.
The two times I heard it, it didn’t mean putting effort toward, it seemed to mean staying on top of.
Never heard it before this. Lots of words in our language do double duty as nouns and verbs, but they’ve got pedigree. I’m going to have a hard time accepting this weird little upstart. It sounds just…I don’t know, too lowbrow.
I was surprised enough to find that “verbify” is a verb.
I’ve not heard “efforting” either. It’s “conversating” that does me in. I’m all about using the simplest word possible, hence my name. Back, just before I joined C&F, my best friend, who I think should get a refund on his education, asked me to proof a memo for him. I explained the difference between “mute” and “moot”. Recently, after he said something to a small group of our friends, I had the opportunity to explain privately some of the meanings of “daisy chain” to him. He’s never going to say that again.
Brilliant! It’s been years since I’ve seen that strip.
Whatever you do, go with gusto . . .
“Conversating”?? Now that’s just useless. We already have “conversing”. It took me a while to warm up to “commentating”, but since that’s usually in reference to sports commentators doing their commentator thing in their professional capacity as commentators, it now rankles somewhat less. After all, anyone and his dog can merely comment. However, I have yet to hear “commentate”. And I hope never to.
Now, in full disclosure, I make up words all the time - but on purpose. One of my most prized has been “collapsion”.
Anyway, we’ve had this discussion before and no doubt will again, so I’ll take this opportunity to remind people that the verbing of nouns and vice-versa (or whatever; adjectives and adverbs come into the mix too) is an ability peculiar to our language, and it is time-honored to the point of eluding dispute. I used to be hardnosed about the topic myself (I think it was first hearing the word “impact” used as a verb that really got me going, and TBH, other than in dentistry it still bugs me) until I realised I was forgetting how many multi-duty words we use and don’t even think about: Strike, peel, chair, fish, hunt, run, truck, fork, piece, alert, smile, cry, toast, drink, drunk, scream, freeze, drive, hunt, pen, pencil, brew, doubt, take, time, honor, whistle, tweak, right, wrong, smile, shout, flail, shred, pile, bribe, talk, debate, knife, table, tote, bag, eye, nose, tongue, shoulder, finger, knee, elbow, toe, touch, store, point, need, work, employ, brave, whirl, light, dog, and bribe are just a few examples; the list goes on and on and is substantial, possibly enormous.
Now mind you, I’m all for correct usage (a debatable term; and with “mind” and “correct”, that’s two more double-duty words. Oops: “double” makes three. Oops: “make” makes four. Oh, jeez: “word” too) and I still remain suspicious of innovations of the noun-into-verb and verb-into-noun kind. But the fact remains that there’s a whole slew of examples to support the practice and, it must be admitted, unfortunately in some cases. All we can do is acknowledge this and hope to make reasonably informed choices in our own speech when needed. And I think having room for a sense of playfulness is a good thing too. But please, not “effort”.
Thank you.
Pedantohedron
Language experts… O K, I didn’t want to start my own thread so here goes.
What is proper/correct spelling/usage of seisún, seisiún, session? The two gaelic forms are confusing and Wiki spells it both ways, how so? What’s correct?
Well, seisiún is the Irish Gaelic spelling, session is the English.
Seisún is just wrong on its face violating the rule of vowel harmony - if e or i precedes a consonant, i or e must also follow the same consonant (or cluster of consonants). Same with the group a, o, u.
