« Wait list »

[wobblychristmastree]

It’s all over Mumsnet! Is this now an accepted English term? What happened to waiting list?

Just a rant from me

I've noticed this creeping in too. Is it American?

I will never not say waiting list.

I agree, it is horrid. Not quite as bad as 'needs gone' though.

I believe it’s an Americanism

It’s a waiting list. It was always a waiting list and it will always, for me, be a waiting list.

Yes. Like ‘waiting in line’ replacing queuing.

It's a waiting list because you're waiting for something.
You're not wait for something.

It’s awful. Waiting list, waiting list.

So annoying.

I am so relieved it isn't just me who loathes this.

Hate it too! 😬

Y'all are going to clutch your linguistic pearls over this, but in the US, it's now one word: waitlist. It's also a verb as in "I was waitlisted by Harvard." Some guides suggest a hyphen for the verb form.

pearls clutched!

seriously though, it’s absolutely fine in the US but absolutely not in the UK IMO

Is it part of a current tendency to shorten everything to gobbledegook — eg you’re on a waiting list/ wait list/ waitlist? (And to invent new words à l’americaine? Even though a perfectly good word already exists)

You also don’t need spaces in «».
«Wait list» is how your title should read. Not « Wait list ».

I hate this. I book gym classes through an app and if the class is fully booked, it invites me to joint the ‘wait list’ 😖

I fear “waiting list” is dying the same way as “invitations”…

@GuelderRoses We're not supposed to pick up on that I've been told as it's Scottish normal speech along with needs cleaned, needs ironed etc that sounds weird to me.

It was… verbed?? 😱 Is there no end to this nonsense?

Indeed

So they wrote me to say I’m on the waitlist.

"Wait list" goes back to at least the 1960s in the US; it was apparently originally used by airlines for standby passengers, so there was some perceived need for urgency or extreme efficiency which might have led to shortening words and using abbreviations. I'd say that as a noun "wait list" and "waiting list" are both commonly used in the US now, but it's almost always "waitlist" when used as a verb.

They should be using 'short list' in that situation then.

Not if they want people to understand what they mean. In the US, "short list" means a narrowed coterie of people for an award or candidates for a position.

It gives me the rage too, OP. And don’t get me started on swim teacher or driver’s license [sic].