Grammar Girl on backformed "verse"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Feb 17, 2012, at 7:37 AM, Neal Whitman 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
>
> Here's one of the blog posts I did on the subject:
> http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2005/06/07/verses-vs-versus/

and check out the eggcorn database entry:

http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/463/verses/

especially note the comments there; the earliest attestation at that point was from 1984.

arnold

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