One more cup of coffee

Verbing weirds language

Raymond comments on new signs in the Microsoft cafeteria that read “Merchandise your food with pride.” (I haven’t actually seen these signs; perhaps they aren’t in the cafeterias that I frequent, or perhaps I haven’t been paying enough attention. But they totally fit.)

The trend of turning nouns into verbs still seems very strange to me. Of course, the reverse also happens – it’s pretty common at Microsoft to hear someone refer to “the asks”, as in, “What are our asks here?” I guess you save valuable time eliminating that extra syllable that the word “request” has.

One phrase I’m happy to have not heard in years is “Let’s double-click on that.” In fact, I haven’t heard that since Apple. I have no idea if anyone there still says it or not. The first time I heard it in a meeting (from the QuickTime evangelist at the time), I had no idea at all what he was talking about. I eventually figured out it meant, “Let’s get into the details of this”, and was promptly so disgusted by just how nerdy that phrase was that I wanted to throw up. One day while in a particularly bad mood, my boss said that in a meeting, and I just went off on him – which then prompted all of the other managers in the room to start listing the other annoying phrases our boss used that they never wanted to hear again. He was gracious enough to take it with good humor. And I never heard him say that again ;)