verbing the noun

[Jonathan Lighter]

Watch for a big turnaround in the number of university English majors.

JL

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: verbing the noun
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As an instance of verbing a noun (in the manner of "podiuming" as
> discussed in Ben's column in today's On Language
> (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/magazine/07FOB-onlanguage-t.html)
> rather than of "verbing the noun" as in Randy's post, there's a photo
> in the Times Travel Section for a piece on the great cuisine of
> Houston that depicts, according to the caption, "Bryan Caswell,
> co-owner of Reef, plating ambjerjack, a white-fleshed fish, with long
> beans, plantains, and a pomegranate jus."  Of course totally
> interpretable in context, but (unlike batters who "plate", i.e. drive
> in, runs in a baseball game) this one is new to me.  I see both the
> culinary and baseball senses are in the OED (the former, though,
> usually as "plate(d) up"), along with a somewhat less transparent and
> non-obviously denominal sense glosses as 'to practise fellatio or
> cunnilingus on'.  Fortunately, I imagine the context (even in the
> absence of newspaper photos accompanying captions) will generally
> make it clear which of these rather different senses is involved.
>
> LH
>
> At 5:35 PM +0800 2/7/10, Randy Alexander wrote:
> >Apparently this is now becoming a euphemism for choking the
> >purple-helmeted warrior of love, and countless other euphemisms that
> >are euphemisms of each other, following the pattern VERBing the NOUN.
> >
> >===
> >
> >If it's as much of an endless stream of guys verbing the noun as is
> >claimed, it might be a neat CBT tool for inducing social anxiety.
> >
> >
> http://www.metafilter.com/88978/Is-ChatRoulette-the-future-of-the-Internet-or-its-distant-past#2938686
> >
> >===
> >
> >More here:
> >
> >
> http://www.metafilter.com/85575/Verbing-the-Noun-if-you-know-what-I-mean-nudge-nudge-wink-wink
> >
> >--
> >Randy Alexander
> >Jilin City, China
> >Blogs:
> >Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
> >Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
> >
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