Grammar Girl on backformed "verse"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
>
> Seems to me this topic has come up here before, but I don't see it in the archives. It's
> the backformation "verse" from "versus". Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) has gathered
> some (self-selecting) speaker data and generated a map to go with this week's podcast,
> like she did with "needs done". She includes a Linguist List email from Ben, with a
> 1995 attestation, and a ~1980 recollection of the word:
>
> http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/why-do-kids-say-versing.aspx

The "Linguist List" post is actually just an ADS-L post.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0412C&L=ADS-L&D=0&P=24837

> Here's one of the blog posts I did on the subject:
> http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2005/06/07/verses-vs-versus/

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org