Is The Past Participle Past Saving?

[joanofarchitrave]

In the last few days, a letter from ds's school has asked him to bring a 'pack lunch'. We have a useful networked folder at work, referred to by all (except me) as the 'share drive'. Another event at work where we look closely at what people are eating is now referred to as the 'focus mealtime'.

I care, but should I bother? Is it a lost cause? Does it even matter?

Oh, I hate this. As in "I text her".

It does matter!

Yes! It does matter. It doesn't make sense otherwise (as far as I'm concerned anyway). We should start a campaign

Oh text as a verb at all. Send a text, please.

I do think the noun-to-verb thing (for which there is a name I can't immediately remember!) is a lost cause. Sorry.

The thing is people have often not seen the "proper" term for things written down, so they extrapolate from other things they have seen. "pack mule" therefore "pack lunch". "focus group" therefore "focus mealtime". And your network drive is also called a "share" (noun) so people are just combining two nouns.

Hmm, I don't mind 'to text' as a verb - new words are fine. It's the elimination of an entire type of morpheme through sheer lazy diction ignorance that gets me. It's not as if English has loads of morphemes to spare. Maybe that's the problem - English has so few morphemes that we don't really know what to do with them.