Last month, we started a series: Nouns gone bad … and this month, we added: Nouns gone bad … sequeled.
Remember, nouns gone bad are those words that originated as nouns and are now being used, with some regularity, as verbs.
We have some new entries to our list of nouns gone bad:
- Clorox: we Cloroxed our drains to ward off the summer bugs.
- journal: Jonathan was journaling the other day.
- board: she (snow)boarded on her last vacation.
- game. as in the following headline:
“Can Open Government Be Gamed?”
Have more examples? Please send them to us (after checking out our previous posts).
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Today, by a news item about some celebrity being “outed,” we were reminded that not only nouns can be turned into verbs … so can adverbs.
Therefore, we have the opportunity to introduce the third in our sequence: “badverbs.”
Per the Urban Dictionary, “outed” has a few definitions, the most common of which has to do with disclosure of the fact that someone is gay. However, the terms “outing” and “outed” have become mainstream words for disclosing information other than homosexuality, about individuals — and organizations. Plus, it can mean just being excluded.
A few years ago, there was a lot of press around the revelation that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. She was “outed.” Earlier this month, we read an article about Judge Sonia Sotomayor being “financially outed.” Then, there are frequently articles about the “outing” of political and religious views, among people who are heterosexual. So, the concept is expanding and evolving.
What other adverbs are badverbs? We discovered a couple and thought we’d share them with you:
- forward: did you forward that email to anyone else?
- should: we make it a practice not to should on anyone.
As we were researching for this blog post, we realized that there is likely yet another category we should explore … “badjectives.” However, when we started on this quest, we found that most of the adjectives for this group would come to this list by having ” …ize” added to them. Now, that is a-whole-nother subject. Stay tuned.
Be sure to see our related posts:
Sources: Urban Dictionary, dictionary.com, Wikipedia
Grammar Police a.k.a. GrammarCops 
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