more nominalized "fail"

ronbutters at AOL.COM ronbutters at AOL.COM
Wed Jun 17 14:00:28 UTC 2009


Can't we just call it a gerund with -ing-deletion?
------Original Message------
From: Randy Alexander
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] more nominalized "fail"
Sent: Jun 17, 2009 9:40 AM

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Arnold Zwicky<zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2009, at 2:18 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
>> Meanwhile, some carping about the nouning of "fail" here:
>>
>> http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/top-7-conservative-new-media-fails-so-far-this-year.php#comment-3499602
>
> including the wonderful:
>
>  Sorry, but "fail" is not a noun. Using it as a noun doesn't make it
> a noun.

Can there be a sentence of the year?  (or two?)

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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