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alexiscartwheelWhen did "to medal" become a verb?
Now while I agree that my countrymen do tend to be a bit medal obsessed, language change is just a fact of life, and should hardly be termed meddling. (Har, har, har. How very clever.) Verbing nouns--that is, creating a verb from an existing noun--is hardly a new phenomenon, and it's not going to stop just because the language pedants get all up in arms and "Wah, they're ruining our language!" about it.
Besides, who really wants to say "Michael Phelps was decorated with a medal eight times"? Sounds snotty and affected to me. But I'm just an ugly American.
It is tempting to say about a week ago - this ear-grating usage, as in "Romero is the only British woman to medal in two different sports", has disfigured the Beijing games - but, annoyingly, some dictionaries do accept "medal" as a verb, meaning "to decorate or honour with a medal" or "to receive a medal, esp. in a sporting event". It is, however, clearly an ugly Americanism - the earliest identified use of the word meaning to win a medal dates from 1966, in California, and the Washington Post was using it by 1979 - which needs to be stamped out. The sooner medal-obsessed Americans stop meddling with the English language the better.
Now while I agree that my countrymen do tend to be a bit medal obsessed, language change is just a fact of life, and should hardly be termed meddling. (Har, har, har. How very clever.) Verbing nouns--that is, creating a verb from an existing noun--is hardly a new phenomenon, and it's not going to stop just because the language pedants get all up in arms and "Wah, they're ruining our language!" about it.
Besides, who really wants to say "Michael Phelps was decorated with a medal eight times"? Sounds snotty and affected to me. But I'm just an ugly American.
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