The week before last I decided to reverse myself again regarding the verbing of "impact." Even if it is acceptable in many circles, one unspoken aspect of my job is to try to keep fellow employees from looking stupid. Regardless of whether it's warranted, there are a lot of people who think the use of "impact" as a verb is stupid. It's a minor thing that is easy to change, so I will continue unverbing impact.
Also on the topic of verbing, a few years ago Kinko's was using the following tagline in its advertisements: "Kinko's: The smart way to office." Ugh. That still gets to me. What really made it grate was the fact that Kinko's was sponsoring lots of NPR programming, and that phrase was read by the NPR announcer between shows about once an hour for half a year.
I have always hated the term "golfing".
ReplyDelete"Did you have fun golfing?"- Do you enjoy golfing?" -"Where did you go on your golfing trip?"
Golf is the name of the game. Adding -ing does not describe the action of playing golf.
I alternate between saying "I played golf" and "I handled the golfer." Sometimes I say "golfering," too. When I'm in a hurry I sometimes say "PGed" for "played golf," and when I'm the opposite of in a hurry--that is, I want people to slow down--I point to holes in the ground and swing my hands back and forth in front of my knees in a bizarre pantomime.
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