Posted on 12/11/2021 7:38:03 AM PST by DoodleBob
There’s an ad out right now for Google’s Chromebook laptop with a slogan that says, “Switch to a new way to laptop.” While I’m hesitant to disparage any of our digital overlords for fear of being stricken from search results, I feel obligated to take a stand. You can’t “laptop” something; “laptop” isn’t a verb.
While I try my hardest to keep things positive here at Grammar Guy H.Q., certain things grate my grammar gears. While I’ve touched on the “verbification” of nouns before, I haven’t explored how marketers and company names have verbified nouns ad nauseam.
I know I’ve seen other versions of brazen verbification in the oversaturated commercial environment in which we live, but the Google example really made me want to laptop someone in the face.
Of course, it’s every modern company’s goal to become a verb themselves. While Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) tried hard to make “Bing” a verb, people still “Google” queries into search engines (usually Google). This made me wonder—what other company names have become verbs due to their overwhelming popularity?
When you owe a friend money these days, you don’t write them a check. You probably don’t even have cash. Instead you “Venmo” or “PayPal” them the money from your bank account into theirs.
This brings up another confusing point: do you keep the verbified company name capitalized? According to AP and Chicago stylebooks the answer is “yes,” although you’ll find the word “Google” as a verb lowercase (“google”) in many online dictionaries. The capitalization situation is in flux; stand by as this phenomenon evolves.
The official word nerd term for converting a noun into a verb is “denominalization.” While I don’t mind this word, I prefer “verbification” or even “verbing.” I like the irony of taking the noun “verb” and verbing it.
Have you talked to someone using a video feature on your smartphone? Chances are you either Skyped or FaceTimed with them. For some reason “video chat” or “video call” doesn’t suffice. Lately, we’ve Zoomed many of our meetings, Ubered our way home from a night out with friends and Instagrammed photos of our dogs. This is what modern companies dream of: make your product so ubiquitous that people use its name in place of a more descriptive-yet-common verb.
Until these company names become genericized (think chapstick, kleenex and thermos), I suggest capitalizing these verbified, trademarked words. If you disagree with me, feel free to conduct your own search engine research on a leading internet website.
I’m gonna Xerox this and store my bait on it to go fish.
Really, the guy is an idiot. This is a fairly normal event in language.
Or maybe condolences. "Grammar mavens" were big in the 70s and 80s. The internet and texting killed them off, and those battles are over.
I’ll try to grammar more correctly in the future.
I'm describing a parallel phenomenon where the person sleeps with the boss to advance in their career. They jump to the front of the advancement line.
-PJ
That’s how a mark reaches “genericide” in the trademark world. The owner of the mark is tasked with preventing this from happening to their own marks—a huge undertaking.
That ship has done sailed.
Tech companies can do a 'cease and desist' if they want but NO, - as a private conservative citizen I owe these folks NOTHING. Genericized way...
And the AP style-book?
It reflects whatever is 'in' with white liberal 'elites' in the print news media...(newspapers)...
Better to make up new words than misuse existing words. “Woke” anyone?
That was pretty much my point. Nouns have been verbed (and verbs nouned) for centuries.
And please stop hanging and dangling infinitives also.
Kind of like it sucks to compete for a job with a Kamalizing Lewinsky?
Task as a verb bothers me to no end.
Its up there with the word worker that is used all the time. Employee or anything else along those lines is seldom heard.
Boycott gerunds!
As one old fart to another, when did we switch from referring to “the world” to “the planet”?
That bothers me even more than it should. It is used for "I felt" and "I thought," too. I don't even hear the rest of the sentences.
I’ll send him a Xerox of your post as soon as I can interface with bim. Right now I’m busy networking.
Somebody should tell Grammar Guy that English, unlike Latin, is not a dead language. It changes over time.
He should not be fooled into thinking that sentences won’t be peppered with nouns that have become verbs. The language is salted with such examples. He should drink some tea, sleep on it, and divorce himself from such rigid thinking. I should mail him a letter. Maybe lure him to switch his outlook.
Nero Wolfe did not allow the use of the word “contact” as a verb in his home, as in “I’ll contact you”. He would not like what we have become.
The vast wisdom of Calvin and Hobbs will never be totally understood.
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