I am foursquare behind Martha on this one. It's a disgusting word, no matter how many people use it. And it IS lazy. In fact, many new word abominations have emerged out of either laziness or bombast - the need to sound important. Many of these come from the business world which never saw a fad it didn't love. Some words I would put in this category:
Action: "Would you action this by the end of the day?" i.e., "work on" or "complete"
Calendar: I'll calendar that meeting for him." i.e., "I'll put it on his calendar."
Task: "Jane was tasked with that report." i.e., "Jane was asked to prepare that report."
Socialize: "Socialize this with other departments." i.e., "show it to them"
(There are plenty more.)
Jane being tasked sounds much more impressive than just being asked, for both her and her manager.
These are all shortcuts, being one word to substitute for more prosaic, but lengthy, formulations. (Or, for more short words.) In other words, LAZINESS.
Well... I'm all for laziness when it's useful, and fewer syllables is always more useful than more, as far as that goes. That doesn't mean I sanction all such shortcuts.
Back-constructions that turn a noun or adjective into a verb are fine, in my book, as long as we don't already have such a verb. For that reason I abhor "reverencing" someone when we can already "revere" him. But there seems to be no obvious alternative to "disrespect", so after a long resistance I gave in to that one. I totally agree with you on "action" and "socialize", but "calendar" sounds like a winner. For some reason I haven't yet reconciled myself to "task" as a verb, but it seems to be a lost battle no matter what I decide.
What I'm getting at, I think, is that I'm unmoved by the "laziness" argument; if that's the only one you have, then I take it simply as an admission that the new construction is both clear and shorter. Come up with another one and I may agree with you.
On this morning's news on a Philadelphia affiliate of a major television network, the newscaster said: "We are trying to effort the details from the police." Since I have a DVR, I was able to back it up and listen to it several times.
I didn't mention it in my last post, but I'd never heard "socialize" in the wild, never even knew it existed except, of course, in the intransitive sense. But just this week I heard it at work for the first time!
And yes, it was horrible.
Bob Bridges said:
Well... I'm all for laziness when it's useful, and fewer syllables is always more useful than more, as far as that goes. That doesn't mean I sanction all such shortcuts.
Back-constructions that turn a noun or adjective into a verb are fine, in my book, as long as we don't already have such a verb. For that reason I abhor "reverencing" someone when we can already "revere" him. But there seems to be no obvious alternative to "disrespect", so after a long resistance I gave in to that one. I totally agree with you on "action" and "socialize", but "calendar" sounds like a winner. For some reason I haven't yet reconciled myself to "task" as a verb, but it seems to be a lost battle no matter what I decide.
What I'm getting at, I think, is that I'm unmoved by the "laziness" argument; if that's the only one you have, then I take it simply as an admission that the new construction is both clear and shorter. Come up with another one and I may agree with you.
I'm reminded of the comment in Paul Fussell's book: "Class," that in our society, the MORE syllables, the more high-falutin' the word appears to be and therefore the more esteemed the speaker is supposed to be. Thus, "libraries" became "resource centers." "Colleges" become "universities." "Trying" becomes "efforting."