New examples [of nouns becoming verbs] from our time might take some getting used to: ‘He actioned it that day’ for instance might strike some as a verbing too far, but we have been sanctioning, envisioning, propositioning and stationing for a long time, so why not ‘action’? ‘Because it’s ugly,’ whinge the pedants. It’s only ugly because it’s new and you don’t like it. Ugly in the way Picasso, Stravinsky and Eliot were once thought ugly and before them Monet, Mahler and Baudelaire.
I hate actioned, and it is ugly. But I don't hate it because it's ugly or because it's new, I hate it because it's abstract and non-specific. I'm fine with googling, blogging, commenting, twittering, youtubing, facebooking, texting, zaprudering, microwaving, dustbusting, shower-massaging, swiffering, PDFing, mp3ing, vasectomizing, tubalizing, essuring, LOLing, ROFLing OMGing WTFing and puppy-head-tilting. In every one of those cases it is completely obvious what the verb means, and in most cases it can only mean one thing (googling is obviously searching with google, although facebooking could be doing any number of things on facebook).
But with action as a verb, it's not clear at all what you're doing. In fact, it varies widely depending on context. It feels like the writer doesn't want to give any thought to what exactly needs to be done, so they're sticking the word "action" in and making me figure it out myself. I once received an email containing some information, followed in close succession by another email saying "That first email was for information only, you don't have to action it." Boy was I glad I didn't have to action it, because I had no idea how I might have "actioned" that email. It wasn't clear to me at all what might have needed to be done.
Now I'll be the first to admit that I may well be feeling this way because I'm a French to English translator. French verbs tend to be far more abstract than English verbs. In many cases (e.g. effectuer, favoriser, intervenir), you can't even translate the French verb or things will get ridiculous. You have to read and understand the entire situation and describe it in clear English, with the verbs being no more helpful than the blank in a game of mad libs.
After spending your entire workday making abstract verbs more concrete and vague verbs more specific, the last thing you want to do is go action something!
2 comments:
I may well be feeling this way because I'm a French to English translator.
Nope. I feel exactly the same. As I was reading your post, I had an identical reaction to yours about "actioning", and I was much gratified to see that I wasn't alone in my reaction.
I even reacted in your list to "Facebooking", thinking "that's not quite as good as the other ones, because it's not really clear what you'd be doing when you 'facebook'". But then you backed off a little on that one and we were again in complete agreement.
I think verbalizing nouns is just fine when it's economical, colloquial, and clear (like googling -- I would never use it in formal tech writing but I use it all the time in informal written and spoken communication). I don't think Fry is really thinking very clearly on the subject, just reacting to some unreasonable assertions with some equally unreasonable counter-assertions.
I may well be feeling this way because I'm a French to English translator.
Nope. I feel exactly the same.
Me, too, and I don't speak French.
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