I’ve noticed that most families have their own personal verbs. In our house, the most common is “murphy.” To murphy is to take someone’s spot on the couch the second they get up to go to the bathroom, so called because our big dog, Murphy, is notorious for doing it. He’s so slick, most of the time you don’t even see him do it. You just look over and he is sitting on the couch with a big doggy grin on his face. You can also get mollied, which is when someone gets right up in your face for no apparent reason.
There are numerous examples in the English language of nouns becoming so synonymous with an activity that they end up becoming a verb: text, friend, google, blog, etc. This phenomenon is called “verbing,” which makes my inner nerd giggle a little, since the name is also an example.
Do you have your own verb? Or maybe you have an adjective or adverb. Give us your best examples of language bending.
8 replies on “Lunchtime Poll: Personal Verbing”
We have family names for things but can’t think of any verbing. A fudorian is the hat with ear flaps because Elmer Fudd wore one.
I don’t think we do much verbing, but we do other weird stuff with words. My username is an example of one my sister and I came up with. We decided to replace everything we could with “poodle” for a couple hours, and “What the poodle? And “Holy poodle!” stuck. I say both all the time.
My family also uses nouns as their own adjectives, like “Are you going outside outside?” for “Are you leaving or just going into the garage?” Or “I’m not going grocery shopping grocery shopping.” to indicate that you’re just running by the store to pick up a couple things, not getting the groceries for the week. We do that with all kinds of stuff.
I have something like this. Years ago when I first started dating my man he was visiting my mum with me for the first time. She served salad with sliced avocado on the side. I went to grab the last piece and there the “avocado face” was born. Now used for any time someone takes something that someone else wants, usually especially if it’s the last one.
Instead of verbing, we tend to give people nicknames based on what they do. Our dog Maggie will squeeze in anywhere she can, so now we call her Jello cause there’s always room for jello. She always looks so sad and hurt when we do it too, which just makes it even better.
If you live in my apartment complex, I either know you by a nickname or your dog’s name. Lol, it’s kind of sad, but fun nonetheless. Examples include: Purple Jumpsuit, Diagonal Parker, Snobby Minnesotans (an entire family that laughed at me when I told them I was from Iowa), and Cool Cool Guy (because he says ‘cool cool’ every time I see him). :-p
In our house we lego (the Mister) and internet (me) in the evenings to relax.
Oh I have been creating my own words for quite a while. So of course I can’t come up with an example. Well all right, an easy one ‘LJ-en’ (being at LiveJournal). -en could be considered a Dutch -ing.
I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but your photo makes me laugh. My dogs think the same thing!