A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 982

The one that drives me crazy is when newscasters (usually local) say “We are efforting to get more information on that story.”
-Jerry Segrest (segrest99 yahoo.com)

On friending a friend I posted a post and tagged her with a tag. She liked with a like but unliked it afterwards, so I unfriended her again.
-Hilde De Pillecyn, Antwerpen, Belgium (hdepillecyn gmail.com)

When I was a teacher in elementary school, some of the teachers would “bathroom” the children, which is how they put it. It was strange the first few times I heard it. I never cared for it, but those teachers used it quite naturally.
-Linda Mates, East Meadow, New York (roselist51 aol.com)

I’ve verbed some nouns in Portuguese, which I use regularly with friends:
café (coffee) to cafezar (to go grab/have a coffee)
lagarto (lizard) to lagartar (to sit or lie motionless in the sun)
jibóia (boa constrictor) to jiboiar (to rest/lie motionless after a large meal)
-tao, Setúbal, Portugal (kreelah gmail.com)

When students arrive in Boston for the fall semester, there are always instances of moving trucks getting their roofs sheered off by low overpasses on Storrow Drive, although these low ceilings are marked. Being a major thoroughfare, this always causes immense traffic headaches. This year is the first year I heard reports on local news stations of a trucks having been storrowed! Locals knew exactly what had transpired!
-Ann O’Donnell, Boston, Massachusetts (odeo22 aol.com)

Around our household we speak of adulting, as in “I’m so tired of adulting. It’s time for an adult beverage.” (Contradiction noted)
-John Brownson, Oakland, California (jhb johnbrownson.net)

Now with Covid-19, the quarantine, and ZOOM, I often use invite and meet as nouns. “I’ll email you the invite to our meet.”
-Eleni Halepi, Thessaloniki, Greece (halepie yahoo.gr)

When I was a child in small-town Texas, my elders speaking of an inherited farm, a gold pocket watch, or other valuable, commonly said the new owner heired it.
-Helen Pringle, Leander, Texas (justicegd aol.com)

I was amused several years ago when I heard someone say of a purchase, “I will PayPal it.”
-Mark D. Taylor, Wheaton, Illinois (marktaylor tyndale.com)

I’m an art teacher and a visual person, which means I see in pictures instead of words. I often tell my students, “I don’t English. I Art.”
-Danette Newton, Wadsworth, Illinois (dmnewton137 gmail.com)

When our little dog started taking meds, my wife and I would ask “Have you pilled the puppy?”
-Steve Pratt, Springfield, Illinois (StevenLPratt live.com)

My brother used to like saying “Beer me!” We mimicked him by saying “Cheese me!”
-Rebecca Shore, Chicago, Illinois (rshore saic.edu)

One that irritated me greatly occurred during the Olympics when the commentators referred to the athletes medaling.
-Fran Glica, Lansdale, Pennsylvania (fhrg comcast.net)

Years ago, as the hostess seated us at a Denny’s, she said, “Your waitress will be with you shortly. She’s beveraging another table.” -Susan Frank, Titusville, Florida (sfrank2 cfl.rr.com)

There is currently an ad on TV for a brain supplement, “Do you want to brain better?” and it sets my teeth on edge every time, and every time I mutter, “Brain is not a verb.”
-Nancy Rosman, Schwenksville, Pennsylvania (nwrosman comcast.net)

Let’s Hoover the floor. Go outside & Roller-Blade. Vicks your chest for your cough. Band-aid your cut.
-Denzil Feinberg, Ottawa, Canada (denzilfeinberg gmail.com)

My mother used to slam on her brakes if the traffic light was just going to yellow. It was safer to continue on (she used to say “I’ve only been in two wrecks and they both rear ended me!”). Our family called slamming on brakes unnecessarily “Ruthing” or “Don’t Ruth!” We did not say it in front of her. 😄
-Deborah Duncan (debmduncan gmail.com)

Sometimes the MS Word has issues with action as a verb. But as an educator in a role with many agendas, actioning an agenda point is essential, despite the appearance of the outraged wiggly line underneath. No other word will do. Certainly not ‘auctioned’, Ms/Mr Autocorrect!
-Cathy Basiel, London, UK (cathybunt71 gmail.com)

Frasier: We could go antiqueing.
Kate: You know, I’m not one of those people for whom ‘antique’ is a verb.
(Frasier, “It’s Hard to Say Goodbye If You Won’t Leave”)
-Andy Vetromile, Marietta, Georgia (fnordy1 yahoo.com)

When I was little (maybe 7-8 yrs old) my family always had Smart Balance butter substitute, but we just called it margarine. I then coined the term “to margrinate” to refer to spreading the butter substitute on bread!
-Rebecca Margolis, Baltimore, Maryland (rebeccamargolis1 gmail.com)

I thought you might enjoy this Get Fuzzy cartoon. Our family’s favorite cartoon from probably 20 years ago.
-Maggie Scofield, Raleigh, North Carolina (mdscofield gmail.com)

Perhaps not my using it, but the one that sticks out the most because I’ve seen and heard it so frequently in media sources in recent years, is the noun “rubbish”. I never heard it used as a verb growing up. Now it’s used as a term of denial, while at the same time indicating that the accusation being denied is not merely specious but garbage. “John rubbished rumours that his wife was leaving him,” or “EU rubbishes Boris Johnson’s claims that post-Brexit trade is running smoothly.” I know it’s on full use now but I’m still not used to it.
-Melanie Barker, Cape Town, South Africa (mb075630 gmail.com)

I’ll check my cash; I may have to cash a check.
-Nadine Smith, Phoenix, Arizona (ns08836 gmail.com)

One of my favorites that has endured was born when my daughter, at around age 3 or 4, used “leftover” as a verb, as in “Granny, can we leftover the rest of my mac and cheese?”
-Jenny Tynes, Seattle, Washington (public jstynes.com)

This just arrived in my email:
“I specialize in helping women transcend their limiting beliefs and architect a strategic success plan.”
Actually, my computer was a better grammarian than the author, and relegated this to the junk file.
-David L. Streiner, Hamilton, Canada (streiner mcmaster.ca)

Icarus (verb) to attempt to do too many things, especially on a Monday, which results in failure to accomplish anything of value for the rest of the week.
-N Chris Louw, Cape Town, South Africa (whispershout gmail.com)

I was once given a pair of goldfish who were dubbed Bert and Ernie. With no kids the names meant nothing. The fish came in a bag, with no tank, aerator, algae-eating snails or duckweed. So for a $1 gift I laid out $20 or so. Any time since that a small contribution from another has entailed a more significant outlay on our part, we say we have been Bert-and-Ernied. It certainly rolls off the tongue more smoothly than being white-elephanted -- and lacks the intentional impoverishment originally suggested by the latter.
-Michael Bucher, San Mateo, California (zoologuy gmail.com)

In the field of archeterie, which deals with bows for violins and related musical instruments, we have a term that started as a noun, became a verb, acquired a prefix, and then was renominalized. The violin bow is strung with a ribbon of horse hair. To install this on a bow is to “hair” the bow. With use, bow hair wears out, so periodically the bow must be “rehaired”. From the verb “to rehair”, we get rehairers and rehairing. And of course there’s a noun for the product of rehairing: it’s called a “rehair”, as in “This is the best rehair my bow has ever received!”
-Geo Kloppel, West Danby, New York (geokloppel gmail.com)

Long ago as I recall, my education professor, who constantly abused our language, once expressed an important idea thusly: “A teach should teach at every teach moment.” He used the same word as a noun, verb, AND adjective!
-Martin Rudolph, Oceanside, New York (mrudolph57 aol.com)

This lyric from John Mayer’s Come Back To Bed using the word forgive as a noun:
“You know you’re not a quick forgive”
-Jayashree Coutinho, Mumbai, India (jayashree sportzinteractive.net)

Have you nouned an adjective? When my 26-year-old son asked me “Can you do me a solid?”, I first wondered, huh?
-Joe Presley, Long Valley, New Jersey (presley89 comcast.net)

To Vultch, verb. To hang hungrily over someone else’s dinner, picking pieces up to eat. From vulture and my youngest daughter who would do precisely that. (I had a restaurant job, playing the harp, dinner was included, and I would get it to go.) I said, you’re like a little vulture. She said, I am vultching your food!
-Ellen Formanek Tepper, Glenside, Pennsylvania (etepper juno.com)

We live in the small Ohio town where the now-infamous virus that infects cruise ships, Chipotle restaurants, schools, and other places (its original name, Norwalk virus) has become a verb. Even though the medical community felt the need to Latinize (there’s another noun-to-verb example) it into norovirus, here in its hometown, we say, “They got Norwalked.”
-Kathy Geer Root, Norwalk, Ohio (kathygroot icloud.com)

My company makes software to create, manage, and simplify IT workflows. Our latest tagline is “Let’s workflow it!”
-Joe Silber, Leiden, The Netherlands (bishopjoey gmail.com)

As a piano teacher, I use the verb “to metronome” = to use the metronome systematically, gradually increasing the tempo of a piece by moving up one number at a time until the desired tempo is reached with everything under control.
-Marsha Martin, Maynard, Massachusetts (marshamartin yahoo.com)

I have a friend who belongs to the Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out), and gets romeoed every week.
-Richard Novick, New York, New York (richard.novick med.nyu.edu)

We volunteers in a small community thrift shop “Chico” overstock, or send to a Chico’s larger charity, when we decide the item needs to be taken two hours down the hill to that bigger community’s charity. So the noun, a town’s name, has become the verb meaning to send. It is so convenient. One word says it all. “Chico it.”
-Sherilyn Schwartz (tsschwartz yahoo.com)

Please credit the brilliant lyricist of “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” Sheldon Mayer Harnick (b. 30 Apr 1924).
-Sidney J. Burgoyne, New York, New York (sjb2nd aol.com)