Verbing

[Aaron Drews]

On Wed, 30 Jun 1999, Gregory {Greg} Downing wrote:
}
}Speaking of verbs on the move, I saw a quote yesterday about the UK royal
}family's shrinking budget. A royal household official, Sir Micheal Peat, was
}quoted as saying, "Costs continue to reduce."
} [...]
} Is this a common UK usage, but not
}common in the US?

        One does not hear it at all, even on the BBC news.  One suspects
it was idiolectal... either of Sir Michael or of the speech-writer.
        --Aaron


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Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
+44 (0)131 650-3485                      Departments of English Language
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron                          and Linguistics

"MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
        --Death