Grammar Girl on backformed "verse"

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

I'm curious about labeling 'verse' slang as both Grammar Girl and the NYT do. My sense of how it's used doesn't suggest slang to me. I don't think that people using it consider it to be a casual/fun/hip alternative to some other verb. In this sense it's not like "pwn" or "w00t" which gamers and others use with more awareness of speaking/writing an informal style. I would guess that teachers are finding "verse" is school writing while slang of the "pwn" variety is comparatively rare.

Matt Gordon
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Ben Zimmer [bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012 1:26 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Grammar Girl on backformed "verse"

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 12:56 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
> 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.

Ah, I'd forgotten I'd posted that! Noted here as well:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509E&L=ADS-L&P=R2925
New York Times, Feb. 20, 1984, B3/4
"Latest Word: New Yorkese Of '84 Is Here"
To verse: High school slang meaning to compete against another school's
team, as in "We're going to be versing the Brown Bombers next week." From
the preposition "versus."

--bgz

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

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