A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1121

A young guy came to give us a quote for mowing our lawn. He asked if we wanted him to use the catcher or leave the clippings on the lawn: “Do you want it catched?” It jarred, but when I mentally substituted “caught”, I decided he was right.
-Ri Weal, Palmerston North, New Zealand (kiwipoetri gmail.com)

I’m French, and of course French borrows words from English. Sometimes, there’s no good reason for it -- using “meeting” instead of “réunion”, for example, is just French bizspeak. But sometimes, the borrowed word does fill a gap. For instance, “downloader” and “uploader” (as verbs, with the final “er” pronounced “ay”) are useful because the French word “télécharger” can mean either.
-Pierre-Alexandre Sicart, Midi-Pyrenees, France (PA_Sicart hotmail.com)

My hobby is crocheting afghans, something I spend a lot of time doing. Last week my niece accidentally used afghan as a verb in a message she sent me. In my reply, I wrote, “I’m afghaning this evening,” which amused her. I doubt it’ll catch on, but it will be useful for my niece and me.
-Kathi Kitao, Kyoto, Japan (kkitao217 yahoo.com)

When someone writes utter gibberish on social media, I’ll sometimes reply “Dude, can you even English?”
-David Denis, Tampa, Florida (dadenis gte.net)

Today’s front page of LA Times: “How can we stop ‘dooring’ cyclists? Car doors opening abruptly in riders’ paths can cause injuries or even death.”
-Sherilyn Schwartz, Crescent Mills, California (tsschwartz yahoo.com)

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Alexander Haig, Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, was notorious for turning nouns into verbs. During his confirmation hearing, he repeatedly told senators, “I’ll have to caveat that.”
-Steven G. Kellman, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas (kellman1 gmail.com)

My nephew recently deadpanned to me, “I sunk-cost-fallacied my entire way through both volumes of Don Quixote.”
-Bryan Todd, Lincoln, Nebraska (boyanlj gmail.com)

We were all IMPACTED by the somewhat OFFPUTTING decision to GREENLIGHT the project.
-Jennifer Arthur, San Francisco, California (jennifer arthurassociates.net)

In one contract as an IT project manager I was tasked with creating a business plan that was quite detailed and actually filled a three-ring binder. I called the process “binderize and deliver.” I don’t think the word ever caught on.
-Janene Luders, Bailey, Colorado (jaluders msn.com)

I was told at a Denny’s restaurant, “It will be just a minute. The waitress is beveraging another table.”
-Susan Frank, Titusville, Florida (sfrank2 cfl.rr.com)

In the Andy Weir novel and movie, The Martian, the main character says “I’m going to science the s*%t out of this!” I talk to my high school seniors about how they are about to have to adult for the first time in their lives without a parachute.
-Paul Anthony Van Tuyl, Santa Rosa, California (pvantuyl sbcglobal.net)

My husband or I sometimes burrito ourselves in the covers leaving the other one cold.
-Helen Bailey, Littleton, Massachusetts (bluedacnis14 gmail.com)

I just received an email notice about the final collection of leaves: “If you have missed final collection (ended Dec 15) you must containerize the remaining leaves at the curb on your property.”
-Jane Simpson, Cincinnati, Ohio (jems12345 icloud.com)

An old favorite that seemed so natural when I coined it: instead of “performing surgery” why not “surgerize”?
-Hunter Watts, New Orleans, Lousiana (phorba005 cox.net)

I have written three books on historic Catholic churches in New Mexico, all recently published by Sunstone Press in Santa Fe. Many of the churches are very remote, and in the books I describe my explorations to find them as churching, analogous to birding.
-David Policansky, Mountainair, New Mexico (davidpolicansky gmail.com)

A co-worker once told me that a meeting had not been calendarized yet. I told her that I didn’t think that word had been dictionarified.
-Lee Entrekin, Old Fort, North Carolina (harpo mindspring.com)

I am a Pilates instructor. We turned Pilates into a verb: Will you Pilate today?
-Jill Bisson, Grand Forks, North Dakota (jillbisson gmail.com)

For nouns used as verbs, I propose this eponym: “Here, let me Garg it for you”, using Garg as a synonym for Google or librarian in the case of researching the meaning or derivation of a word.
-Mariana Warner, Asheville, North Carolina (marianaw6002 gmail.com)

As an archivist, I fear telling someone, “I’ll archive that”, as it can be be misunderstood to mean, “I’ll put it away in a box” instead of making possible answers accessible through arrangement and description.
-Alison Dundy, New York, New York (alison.shore.dundy gmail.com)

As a tech writer in the semiconductor industry with a background in teaching English, it took me a while to accept the use of a logical AND and OR as verbs. Example: “The input bits are OR-ed together in the multiplexer.”
-Todd Bersley, Thousand Oaks, California (bersleyt yahoo.com)

I don’t like the sentiment of the sign (I think there is plenty of wrong on both sides in this conflict), and this verbing is not one I’d push to amplify, but I felt I had to share: “You will not antisemite me into complacency with genocide.” (Archived photo, source)
-Elizabeth Wise, Cle Elum, Washington (youngwise74 yahoo.com)

In my family, my sister and I didn’t know that grocering was not a verb until our mid to late forties when our brother told us that it was not. We were both sorely disappointed, but continued to use it.
-Abby Belknap, Paso Robles, California (abby.belknap gmail.com)

Let me bottom line that for you.
-Diane Colello, Saugerties, New York (dianebc22 gmail.com)