English as she is spoke

It’s a while since I posted anything that might be called a writing tip (or more likely a writing moan) but a couple of really cringe-making examples of nouns used as verbs mean that I feel compelled to write something somewhere.

Visiting a restaurant in Edinburgh the other day I was faced with a notice on the door saying that, for evening dining they will insist on “cloakrooming” outer coats.

There is, at the time of writing, a large traveller-occupied site where the travellers are resiting removal by the local authority. I heard a BBC newsreader say that …further action would be taken if the travellers did not “evict” by a certain date.

Ugh!!

Being something of a literalist I regularly groan when I here people in a shop, bar, or the like ask “can I get a …” rather than can I have. I keep trying to persuade my local landlord to respond with “no but I’ll get it for you”. To date he has not taken my campaign seriously.

Advertisement

2 Responses to English as she is spoke

  1. A says:

    I think you’re glass-housing here: “when I here people in a shop”. Here?

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.