As often happens, an article on another blog has fired my mental cylinders and — coupled together with some peeves I’ve already petted — has generated enough sparks to inspire a story.
The culpritical article in this case, is Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of List of Words You Love to Hate. All your favorite pet peeves in one location.
This has touched a nerve. My past musings, after seeing the word HEROIZE in an article, were about how some writers have such a love of making nouns into verbs, and/or mangling both. Heroize is actually an old word that’s never caught on well, but M-W’s article has given me a few new words to grind my teeth on: CONVERSATE, COMMENTATE, and INCENTIVIZE. Shriek!
Biff has done another Whatnot Wednesday prompt post again; since this post definitely fits in the “Whatnot” class, I’ll give him a nod for that inspiration.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt word for today is ZEPHYR. I think I can work a few of those into my tale.
A Page from Mrs Ditz’s Longsuffering Diary…
My car was running rough, so at 10 am I took it to the mechanic to see if he could figure out what was wrong. And since I didn’t want to loiter at the shop while he was mechanizing it, I decided to go for a walk. The morning was warm and sunny with zephyrs swirling around, I felt inspirated to meanderate through the park and enjoy the flowers.
I wonder if my daughter is finding the prom dress fabric she’s looking for. I left her at the mall where she planned to materialize at Fabric Haven. This girl is definitely an accomplished seamstress. You should have seen the gorgeous fitted blazer she seamed for herself last month. A perfect fit!
I’d thought of going back to the mall myself and grabbing a coffee in the food court, but you know how it is when everybody’s cacophoning on their cells. You can’t hear yourself think! So I’ll just stroll along and appreciate these morning breezes zephyrating the flowers and shrubs. I just encounted a nice old lady taking her young grandson for a walk and she commentated, too, on the lovely weather.
This morning my son is engaged in an important work. He’s together with several other scientists who want to scientize a report on our local environment. They’ve got a lot of data to analyze and categorize, then they’ll compilate their findings and present their report to some committee that wants to improvate air quality in our city.
I hope it doesn’t take that fellow long to mechanize my car. My dog’s having pups and the vet tells me Drowsy could be litterating any moment now. Drowsy’s a purebred English Terrier and I was hoping to sell the pups, but I suspicion that the mongrel down the street may have illegitimatized this batch.
I think I’d best rotate and head back in the direction of the garage. I don’t want to incentivize him to bill me for any more time than what’s strictly necessary.
Christine's Collection 
Great blog!, Christine! I work in a very corporate office and I get the joy of listening to the English language mangled every single day. I do believe there is a committee somewhere who comes up with new batches of nouns turned into verbs and otherwise innocuous words twisted and bastardized into some sort of Frankenstein’s monster of a word. it is horrifying. But worse still … I find myself using said zombie words just so m co-workers will understand me. I always have to take a shower when I get home from work.
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There was a time when the use of a dictionary was taught in every school and impressed on every little mind — along with spelling. All this confusion comes about when people hear, take a stab at, pass along, and no one verifies. But I don’t know how much a person can say; I’m starting to suspect this is how the English language has evolved this far. The French poulet (chicken) becomes the English poultry, etc.
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P.S. I totally forgot to thank you for playing along with Whatnot Wednesday!
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You’re welcome. It seems I always have some whatnot squirrelled away. (Speaking of verb-ing the nouns. 🙂 )
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Ha. I’m reading this in bed with my Mac Air on my stomach. I was giggling so much that my computer got to jiggling up and down and I couldn’t read it. Very clever. I’ve gotta reblog this one. Good job.
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So glad you liked my verbiating ramble. I’m honored for the reblog. 🙂
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Reblogged this on lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown and commented:
I love Christine Goodnough’s story concerning the coinage of absurd verbs. Hope you do, too.
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If I were a reporter, I’d be efforting to keep from laughing hysterically about all the new words!
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I thought reporters were the ones doing all this mystifying twistifying? 😉
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OMG! Christine, you have like literally authored the most awesomely amazing blog post ever! So incentivizing! I just had to commentate that to you here! Anyways, best to you!
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I’m honored to receive kudos from such an enthused commentator. 🙂
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I am glad I had to cognisize your story Christine. It was well keyboarded 🙂
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Thank you. Every now and then I like to enounciate the newest linguistic twists. 🙂
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So good Christine! I was grinning and laughing more and more as I read it. I commiserate with you on this…
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Thank you. I’m glad to give some folks a chuckle in these tough times. 🙂
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I could not help but laugh (given I did that poetry challenge a go where I purpled 😉)
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