Could we please retrieve the noun "request" from its banishment?

[Vaguelyclassical]

In the last decade people started going on about "it's only a small ask" or "I have just one ask." Ask, to my ears, is a verb, not a noun. It sounds incredibly awkward; what is wrong with saying "I have a small request"?

*edited for adverb failure

I agree with you but surely most of us have never stopped using “request”.

I hope that's not too big of an ask...

You are absolutely right. I suspect I have been infected with this sloppy practice. I will make "request" my word of the day.

It's MN!

Nobody "asks for" or "requests" anything.

They demand or insist (and usually throw themselves to the floor in tears for good measure).

ETA - that isn't really what your OP was about - I have wandered off topic, but I've written it now...

While they ‘confront’ someone. Rather than just asking that person a question.

This falls into the same rage folder as ‘serve’, in place of ‘serving’, for me. eg, ‘1500 calories per serve’

I’m also annoyed by its new use as a synonym for ‘a drink with some form of spirit involved’, eg, ‘Why not try our signature serve? Parsnip gin with an innovative marshmallow twist’ etc etc.

(and people on MN no longer say anything to other people, they ‘state’ - which makes all those rambling accounts of family arguments sound like a police witness statement.)

Oh, the lovely rage already unfolding makes me want to derail my own thread and complain about the loss of "a stranger" and its weird transmutation into "some random." Which somehow seems to be related to the original lament: parts of speech turning queasily into other parts of speech . . . .
(She stated.....)

Does "some random" have slightly different connotations?

"A stranger" suggests someone who may not belong, who may have just arrived; who is either about to become someone you know or up to no good.

"Some random" means a person who's just as likely as anyone else to be in that area; whom you will probably never encounter again.

It becomes much more likely in a large mobile population.