Guestmudgeon Terry Berg is complaint-ing
about...
[Some time] ago I heard
Tom Ridge on CNN talking about the security measures surrounding the
Democratic Convention during which he used a phrase along the lines
of "all of those conventioning here". I have to assume he meant
"all attending the convention" or "all (of those) convening here"
but I can't be sure. Conventioning isn't in my dictionary
but it gets more than a few hits with MSN search.
I wonder if this FUNCTION-ing explosion (a la the Bronx
Cheer's evil twin conversat-ing) is like a viral outgrowth of
the transformation of words like vacate (v) to vacation (n)
and back to vacation-ing (v) again? I expect that the
Illiterati, in a perfectly consistent way, are
re-construction-ing the new English.
Then I found out that
it's worse than I thought:
After my having
mentioned the use of conventioning by Tom Ridge, I was
told by a friend that redecisioning was
currently employed in internal documentation at BofA.
Evidently, we owe more than we could ever have guessed to the
erudition of sports culture. It's clearly winning the war
against all things academic.
de·ci·sion
(di-sizh'en) n.
1. The passing of judgment on an issue under
consideration. 2. The act of reaching a conclusion or
making up one's mind. 3. A conclusion or judgment
reached or pronounced; a verdict. 4. Firmness of
character or action; determination. 5.
Sports.
A victory in boxing won on points when no knockout has
occurred. --de·ci·sion tr.v. de·ci·sioned,
de·ci·sion·ing, de·ci·sions.
Sports.
To achieve a victory over, as in boxing: He decisioned
his opponent in the third round of the match. [Middle
English decisioun, from Old French decision,
from Latin decisio,
decisio-, curtailment, settlement, from decidere,
to cut off, decide. See DECIDE.]
--de·ci"sion·al
adj.
- American Heritage Dictionary
It can be confounding.
But it is human nature to assume that a language rule applies across the
board, even if technically it doesn't work. Steven Pinker speaks about
this phenomenon in his book
The Language Instinct, a fascinating trip
into how our minds work linguistically. One good example we hear is "boughten".
It's not a word, but even educated people utter it when speaking informally,
patterning the conjugation of bought on words like wear and
bear (i.e., worn and born). However, one still has
to wonder why, in the case of the neo-verb decision, the old standard
decide won't work! As an aside,
the OED does not list decision as a verb. |
Issue 200, page
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