triticale - the wheat / rye guy

Verbing Weird Language

Language is weird, especially the English language. The process of creating new verbs from existing nouns is more a manifestation of this wirdness than a cause of it.

It makes perfect sense that the word which describes an action taken using an object should reference that object. A camcorder is used for camcording. Thus I was pleased recently by an email I recieved from a motorsports list. This group was holding an event in the parking lot of a venue where a demolition derby was to have been held the night before. There was some concern about detritus from automobiles such as would be driven by the spectators, but the venue assured the group that, quoting verbatim, that the parking lot would be "streetsweeped".