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I was taught to use the word "invite" as a verb and "invitation" as a noun - "I will invite you to my party." "I bought a box of printed party invitations." "I received an invitation to a business luncheon."
Increasingly, however, I see "invite" used as a noun - "I received an invite to the luncheon" "The invites to the baby shower were so cute."
Is this a regional difference in usage to which I am only now being exposed because I read too many etiquette blogs on the internet? Merriam-Webster.com seems to indicate that the use of "invite" as a noun is not exactly correct.
Honestly - the use of "invite" as a noun drives me crazy. Should I just get over it?
Forgive me if this has been discussed to death previously. I cannot find such a topic.
I think this use of invite as a noun is a fairly new development. But the phenomenon is neither new nor unusual in English.
It is interesting to me that English has a number of noun/verb pairs for which the spelling is identical, but the stress pattern is different. In'vite/'invite is another one of these, where the verb is stressed on the second syllable, whereas the noun is stressed on the first syllable. There are many examples of these kinds of pairs in English, however in some cases, one of the stress patterns is beginning to dominate the other, and can be used as either part of speech.
Here are only some of the many verb/noun examples:
Re'cord/'record (n.b. 'Record as a synonym for recording is much like 'invite as a synonym for invitation.)
Con'flict/'conflict
Per'mit/'permit
Ad'dict/'addict
Ad'dress/'Address
Dis'count/'discount
Pre'sent/'present
Up'set/'upset
Re'ject/'reject
Com'mune/'commune
Sus'pect/'suspect
In'trigue/'intrigue
Other parts of speech may also get in the act, such as verb/adjective:
Per'fect/'perfect
I believe that Facebook (and possibly other similar sites) is responsible for the explosion in this usage. It always sounds phony and forced to me, and I dislike it, but it has become quite common.
In my region it is common for speakers to accent the second syllable of the noun permit. After thirty years of hearing it, I still find it strange.
Creating a noun out of a verb (and the inverse, like "to friend", speaking of Facebok) is, as has often been remarked by our fab hosts on air, common. Whenever a new one comes in, we grit our teeth. Especially when there is already a perfectly good noun "invitation". I have the same reaction to "a quote" instead of "a quotation". But then, speakers naturally tend to shorten words, too.
A (to me) new one out there is "an explain" instead of "an explanation. Here I think computer language is responsible, for there is something called "an explain" as a sort of string or I know not what, and I guess the noun form has migrated over into common usage from there. We can fight individual battles but will not win this war.
tromboniator said:
I believe that Facebook (and possibly other similar sites) is responsible for the explosion in this usage. It always sounds phony and forced to me, and I dislike it, but it has become quite common.
In my region it is common for speakers to accent the second syllable of the noun permit. After thirty years of hearing it, I still find it strange.
Many thanks to all of you (I won't say "all of y'all") for "talking me down". I will just keep gritting my teeth and mentally replacing words.
re PERmit vs perMIT – I'd never thought of it, but both pronunciations are very common here with slightly differing meanings. PERmit is a piece of paper that enables one to take an action – A parking permit, a learner's permit. perMIT is to allow something to happen – "I'll perMIT you to buy a car when you get your driver's PERmit".
All of which could bring us around to the most troubling usage error in written English: misuse of the noun "affect". In speech, there is never really a problem because there is a pronounced difference in the spoken form of the noun that follows the pattern Glenn describes (shift of emphasis to the first syllable) but with a change in the vowel sound. I believe that the great majority of English speakers go through their entire lives without ever using the arcane meaning of the noun "affect" correctly.
Most people pronounce the verb "affect" the same way they pronounce either form of "effect" — uh'fect. The pronunciation ef'fect (or sometimes eef'fect) is less common, usually reserved to emphasize the verb form, as in "effect changes".
There is no real cure for this. I know the endless misuse of affect in print will continue to grate on me, I just have to get past it. Most internet forums welcome non-native English speakers, as well they should, so precise language is not an issue. We have to tease the meaning out of posts that are composed by people who barely understand English to begin with, or those who have developed habits based on the contortions of texting or tweeting.
Today a received an e-mail with a new take on invite versus invitation :
The Panel is an invite-only online panel for customers … .
I do find this use a little jarring. I would expect invitation-only perhaps because it is such a fixed expression. It seems it is not so fixed as I imagine it to be.
This same document also contains the phrase prize draw instead of prize drawing.
For each survey we conduct there will be a prize draw
It's sort of a mystery how a word usage passes from novelty to acceptability, because persistent and wide use is not the answer.
The misuse of affect has remained misuse for a long time, and its prospect still doesn't look promising.
Invite as a noun somehow manages to pass muster, albeit remaining endlessly jarring.
'prize draw' sounds like something of purgatory status more or less like invite
The very thing that invite is used as a noun is not surprising at all. It is due to 'conversion' which is especially peculiar to English word-building. So one and the same word may function both as a noun and a verb. If in other cases we may not be sure which of them was derived, in case of "invite" we can surely sat that the "noun invite" was derived from the verb and not vice versa. If the verb "invite" is also used as a noun, it is nothing but the development of the linguistic sign, providing the dynamics of the English language.
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