Oddbean new post about login | logout In my poll from a few days ago, nearly all of you thought it was not wrong to use the verb "contacted" in the sentence "She immediately called an officer at the Naval Intelligence Service, who in turn contacted the FBI." I was surprised to learn that decades ago, people objected heartily to using the word "contact" as a verb. This came up when I interviewed Steve Kleinedler, formerly of the American Heritage Dictionary for the Grammar Girl podcast this week. 1/X https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/111/058/750/727/767/635/original/89cb39d234c26060.png
What was most interesting and new to me was that the argument wasn't just about "verbing nouns," but also about "contact" being too vague. People argued you should say someone "called," "wrote," or "told" someone else something. Part of me wonders if the increase in the number of ways we have to communicate helped drive the acceptance of "contact" as a verb. Now we can also fax, text, and message, for example. 2/X
@bb052609 I wonder if “Friend” is heading this way too Not only thanks to the button on social media But now we know people on social media as our friends, who we have never met, but we may discuss them in real life as if we know them Are they our friends? How else do we refer to them without using more complicated language like, “this person I know only from Instagram”
