Hi. After spending a week at EAS and having my computer crash, I thought I would just say, "Hi." I had to listen to some interesting conversations all week. Some were excruciating, but gave me something to gripe about.
When did the habit of turning nouns into verbs begin? The first I remember was "stonewalling," from the Nixon era. I also dislike "I was tasked to perform that." Tasked? Really? Not "given the task?" (Almost as bad is the habit of calling a social security number a "sosh.")
In addition, we take passive verbs and make them transitive; I hate "let's GROW the businees." Dammit, plants grow, kids grow, businesses expand or business is increased.
And, enough with the cliches already. "Outside the box" isn't anymore. At least we don't hear "clearly" as much as a decade ago, but, take away "like" and "you know" from many people and they are speechless. As in "he said, like, are you coming to the party?" Or, worse yet, "he was like, here I am."
Lord knows text messageing is destroying the language fast enough, we professionals needn't help
