I Was Coffeeing While Writing This

An interesting topic came up in The Writing Show's November newsletter. Paula B pondered the "to verb or not to verb" concept in relation to the "verb everything" trend that seems to be taking over.

Verbing (see I'm doing it right there), is taking a noun and mutating it into a verb -- it's often just as simple as adding "ing" to the word. One of the more popular examples of what Paula is talking about is the phrase "googling" -- To google something generally means to look it up online by typing the keywords into google.com (or google.ca if you prefer) and hitting the search button.

While I abuse the English language regularly (you often hurt those you love the most), I like to think of myself of in-line with language purists. I mean, my blood pressure rises when I see simple things like people using "their" and "there" incorrectly or more commonly the misuse of "your" and "you're" -- never mind the complete lack of basic grammatic principles in email and other online-based forums where one can string words together.

But there's something admirable and a bit thrilling about seeing a language mutate, develop and evolve. I can imagine sitting down with my grand-kids one day and saying: "Yes, my little ones, I was there when the term "googling" was first coined. And I remember clearly those days when the Bushification of the American dollar kept the Canadian dollar at its all-time high for years after George Dubya left office." (Bushification might very well be an economic term we use in the distant future in place of such words as "decimation" or "destruction" -- it's much more exciting than Reganomics)

While I'm poking fun at the whole concept, I do have to admit that seeing a language evolve (or devolve as the purist side of my mind wants to say) is terrifying. To that end, I have to look for positive things in it. Here's one. I can also see "verbing" nouns to allow the ability to describe multiple actions in a single word. Such as the phrase: "I was coffeeing while writing this." To coffee can be either the act of making coffee or the act of drinking coffee -- in this particular case, both. So a benefit is that I was able to communicate a simple act of what I was doing in as little words as possible.

That's a good thing isn't it? Well, the phrase does lose clarity -- what, exactly am I doing, making it or drinking it? Hmm, the part of me that loves words, that loves the way they can roll together and create an entire scene, convey an emotion, stir up memories, portray a character and incite a reaction in the reader -- that part of me, the one that takes pleasure in seeing an elegantly crafted sentence of words strung together creating that beauty, well, it recoils in fear at that thought.

However, one thing does give me hope -- the thought that language use and misuse fluctuates like the tide, (or even like the back and forth ramblings of my blog posts), but words abide.