HughCoe
Joined: 11 Feb 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 3:35 am
Post subject: Needless Verbing of Nouns |
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I have found no thread discussing such execrable current locutions as the pseudo-verb "impact," which has now effaced all discrimination among the various ways and degrees of influencing or affecting.
Tonight an NPR reporter claimed that her subject had been "angsting" over something. Last week another asserted that someone had
"angsted." Well, everybody knows that existential dread was long ago ripped out of "angst" to make it synonymous with worry, fear, indecision, and the full host of quotidian emotions. Now "educated" speakers are
verbing it, as though the language lacked rich verbs ranging from
dither to cower, shrink, tremble, quiver and so forth.
Does anybody care? Or was it agreed long ago that the battle was lost,
and we could merely hope to preserve good words, not fight bad ones? |
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