verbing in the Stanford Chaparral

[Landau, James]

A much better-known 20th Century usage is Mordred's song in Lerner and
Lowe's musical "Camelot":
"Fie on Goodness, fie!"

It is of course arguable whether "fie" is used here as an imperative
verb or as an interjection, but if the latter, then the song runs a good
long ways without a predicate in it.

OT: re "Stoopit"

There was an old man in N'tuckit
Who kept all his dough in a bucket
    His daughter Nan
    Ran off with a man
And as for the bucket, N'tuckit

He followed the two to P'tuckit
The girl and the man with the bucket
    He said to the man
    "You're welcome to Nan"
But as for the bucket, P'tuckit

OT: in bowling three strikes in a row is not a "hat trick" but a
"turkey"

     - Jim Landau

-----Original Message-----
From: Arnold M. Zwicky [mailto:zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU]
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 12:02 PM
Subject: verbing in the Stanford Chaparral

(the Stanford Chaparral is the student humor magazine)

from vol. CVIII no. 3, p. 8, "A Gentleman's Club" (by Meghan McCurdy),
the verbing of an interjection:

[about a place called A Gentleman's Club]  It pains me even now to take
it down, but rest assured that in the low grunts of lesser humanity I
found no conversation worth having, no music worth listening to, and in
the unnecessary and gratuitous display of base and vile flesh no
companionship worth pursuing.  I fie upon it.

[the OED takes "fie" back to a sound of disgust]

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