I spent a good number of my growing-up years on a farm. My uncle raised chickens, milked cows, and grew corn, oats and wheat. I grew intransitively; my uncle grew transitively.
This subject came to mind when I was writing my post about gift as a verb. I had found a list of “Words you don’t need to use,” and gift (presumably as a verb) was among them*, which was what had led me there. Not in the list but in the comments was this: “I hate it profoundly when ‘grow’ is used as a transitive verb!”
My first thought was of my uncles and my cousins and my grandfather out in the fields not growing corn, oats and wheat. But I quickly realized that the profound hatred was likely directed at a more modern transitive use of grow. The growing my farm-employed family was synonymous with raise, cultivate, nurture. (The OED’s first record of this use is from 1774.) The profound hatred was likely reserved for the transitive use synonymous with expand, as now often heard in corporate jargon-friendly situations, such as “We must grow the business.” (Oh so modern. The OED’s first record the sense of “To cause to increase, to enlarge” is from 1481, though interestingly the OED labels this use as obsolete. So it’s not modern after all. It’s archaic.)
In some word-watching quarters, the transitizing of verbs (as in this case, grow intransitive being grown into grow transitive) seems to attract as much ire as the verbing nouns (hmm—is verb as a verb transitive, intransitive, or both?). But here again, conventions and preferences and everyday usage shift over time.
It is a matter of, shall we say, growing the language.
*Other words not included in “Words you don’t need to use” are utilize (which I defend as the right word in the right usage), and impact as a verb, which I cheer. Words appropriately not included in “Words you don’t need to use” are flange, carburetor, chartreuse, Brobdingnagian and plotz—and just about every other word anyone has spoken, because, as with utilize, it’s a matter of using the right word at the right time. The only words you truly need to use, as both your mom and mine told us, are please and thank you.
On this glorious eve, I’m going to play the Ghost of Christmas Past to the Scrooges who would penuriously deny us the gift of gifting.
I’m talking about the the Scroogely denial of English’s gifted ability to bestow life to nouns, creating verbs in the process. Gift-noun begats gift-verb begats whining from the persnickitorial language Scrooges, who have real misgiftings about such conversion.
Do these people challenge the word gifted as applied, for instance, to prodigies? Should those endowed with special abilities instead be givended? Or something? Should the relay-baton present be regifted or regave? In each case, I believe I’ll stick with the former.
The American Heritage Book of English Usage notes:
Unfortunately, the use of gift as a verb in Modern English is tainted by its association with the language of advertising and publicity (as in Gift her with this copper warming plate).
Fair enough, particularly when commercialism has tainted the strings-attached noun gift so often that the phrase “free gift” is an almost required redundancy. But the real tragedy of the above example is the possibility of someone thinking a copper warming plate might be a romantic gift.
The language Scrooges are a bit more pointed than American Heritage. For example: “Using gift as a verb is a sign of stupidity, laziness, and verbal sloppiness.” And denying its use as a verb is a sign of not just persnickitorial intolerance but also of denying a basic writing principle: The right word is the right word. Certainly, using the lightning-rod gift when give is the right word is frown-upon-able. “Don’t gift in! I’ll gift you a call later!” But there are instances when gift, with its almost legal nuance, can be a more precise and powerful word than its suggested synonyms. Consider:
Smith will gift the deed to the university. Formal, with implications of recorded transactions and tax benefits.
Smith will give the deed to the university. “Here ya are. Don’t need it anymore.”
Smith will bestow the deed to (upon?) the university. With puffed-up chest and “Pomp and Circumstance” playing in the background.
Smith will bequeathe the deed to the university. Hinting of magnanimity, but without quite the formality of the first instance.
Smith will donate the deed to the university. Comments similar to that of bequeathe.
Smith will make a gift of the deed to the university. Only if Smith is trying to compensate for failing the writing course that instructed students to avoid passive, wordy and, yes, verbally sloppy phrasings.
And so this Ghost of Christmas Past turns back a page or two to quote not Dickens but Henry Fielding in Tom Jones, A Foundling (Book 1, Chapter 5): “As this is one of those deep observations which very few readers can be supposed capable of making themselves, I have thought proper to lend them my assistance; but this is a favour rarely to be expected in the course of my work. Indeed, I shall seldom or never so indulge him, unless in such instances as this, where nothing but the inspiration with which we writers are gifted, can possibly enable any one to make the discovery.”
Sure, there are plenty of ways to abuse gift. But sometimes, like the noun at Christmas, it’s best to accept it with grace and gratitude.
Today’s instruction: Always use fail as a verb! A thing that fails is a failure!
Always use it as a verb, Mr. Brohaugh?
Yes. Without fail! . . . oops.
I bring this up because of Christopher Beam’s recent Slate coverage of the increasing use of fail as a noun (which I discovered by way of Editrix alert). I suggest that Slate’s shot at the noun was not a complete succeed. For one, modern use of the noun is slangish and a bit distracting, but I’m not sure it’s precisely the “Internet meme” that Slate would have it. Fail as a noun was first recorded near the turn of the 13th century. Chaucer used it, as did Shakespeare and Swift. It has been dubbed “obsolete” by the Oxford English Dictionary, with the exception of the fossil phrase, “without fail.”
Is the modern use a revival, or a new formation? Here’s an excerpt from Slate:
Most Internet memes have the lifespan of fruit flies. But there’s evidence to suggest fail is here to stay. For one thing, it’s easier to say than failure. (Need for brevity might explain why, in Webspeak, the opposite of fail is not success but win.) And there’s a proud tradition in English of chopping off the endings of words for convenience.
Yes, but there are other proud neological traditions, as well, such as verb-to-noun conversion? Both the original noun and the original verb use appear about the same time, both brought in from Old French; one was not—in English, at least—a conversion of the other. In the case of the modern use, I suspect it’s conversion and not shortening, just as the noun convert was converted from the verb convert. Particularly in the light that first recorded use of failure comes just under 350 years after fail the noun.
By the way, Slate points to a good blog recording fails: FAILblog, but fails to note its kin, the English FAIL Blog.
And the title of this piece? Just another excuse to honor Paul Newman:
A lot of interesting words are being bandied about in this election and the coverage thereof. And as always in such matters, people don’t seem to care about exactly what those words mean (to the point of Orwellian “War Is Peace” sorts of rhetoric on the order of “Attack Is Respect,” but that’s a different topic). Here are four examples of words we don’t see much (in two cases, I’d welcome seeing them more), with but fumbled eloquence:
The Comics Curmudgeon blog—pointed commentary on inane daily comics—recently highlighted a Family Circle installment in which dimly precocious young Billy is reading a generic Dictionary and declaring, “That’s weird. ‘VERB’ is a noun.”
To which blog host Uncle Lumpy retorts, “Yes, Billy, and ‘LAME’ is an adjective.”
Interestingly, ‘ADJECTIVE’ is an adjective—or at least it was when it first began, as part of the phrase “noun adjective” (accent the middle syllable, as in objective). But then adjective got nouned into its present-day use.
In which case, look at your almost-dictionary, Billy! “‘NOUN’ is a verb!”
(Non-Inane Comics Alert: Methinks Billy might actually be reading a Calvin and Hobbes retrospective, as it was young Calvin who declared the classic “Verbing weirds language.” End Non-Inane Comics Alert.)
By day I am a writer and editor for a publication that covers marketing (by night, I am The Incredible Sulk!, but that’s another story). Not too far into my tenure in this position (editor, not Sulk—OK, Sulk, too), I found myself facing a potential arch-enemy in the form of the word leverage. This word glared at me from a manuscript. Actively glared, as it was performing as a verb. The sentence in question was something on the order of “Many marketers leverage customer testimonials to spread positive word-of-mouth.”
I fretted a bit. Leverage exhibits all the symptoms of the sort of word-ballooning I decry in my book Write Tight. The word lever is a perfectly good noun; so is leverage. Why verbicize (”verbate”?) leverage when the verb lever is available? In the manuscript, I replaced the verb. At least, I attempted to. Consider my edits in search of synonym:
Many marketers exploit customer testimonials . . . Hmm, too harsh. Sounds manipulative.
Many marketers utilize customer testimonials . . . Close, but utilize with its implication of invention lacks the sense of taking advantage of an appropriate asset. OK, then how about:
Many marketers take advantage of customer testimonials . . . Closer, maybe, but it still has the tinge of manipulation.
Many marketers use customer testimonials . . . No. Use is a weak substitute.
Many marketers lever customer testimonials . . . No. And no. Didn’t even consider it. When was the last time you heard any human being use lever as a verb?
I let leverage live within the manuscript, and I contend that it should live in the language, because it fills a need. Granted, some hate the word, in part because it began as jargon—financial jargon and not computer jargon as one source has claimed, with its first recorded use in the late ’30s.
All this comes to mind because leverage appeared in a recent BBC list of listener-contributed nominations of “50 office-speak phrases you love to hate” (I’d be tempted to ask why “office-speak” isn’t on the list, but I think I just have). The BBC list presents a shiver-inducing group of truly atrocious words and phrases. For instance, what the hell is an “idea shower”? And here’s one I haven’t encountered before: “The new one which has got my goat is conversate.” Yikes. You can converse, so why do you need to conversate?
And I hear some of you saying, “Mr. Incredible Sulk, you blast conversate when converse is available, yet you defend leverage when lever is available?” I do indeed. Conversate fills no need. It is duplicative, a bizarre “synonym” of converse. On the other hand, leverage is not a precise synonym of lever, neither in noun nor in verb form. It fills a need.
And, what the hell, let’s look at some history. The noun lever has been used since at least the late 1200s; the noun leverage has been used in the literal since at least the early 1700s, and figuratively since at least the early 1800s. The verb use of each? The Oxford English Dictionary presents the following quote as the earliest recorded use of lever as a verb meaning “to lift or raise”: “The bottom of the pole being ‘levered’ out of the ground.” This is in 1876, and the use is so unusual that the author put the word in quotes. What’s more, this is physical lifting; the figurative sense isn’t recorded until 14 years later. Therefore . . .
Noun-to-verb transformation time, test subject lever: around 400-500 years.
Noun-to-verb transformation time, test subject leverage: around 50 years. The upstart!
Me, I think that employing the word leverage to create unique meaning is a marvelous example of leveraging the flexibility of English.
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