One of the (many) quirky quirks of English is that nouns tend to gradually morph into verbs, to the horror of many.
Johnson, the Economist’s fantastic language blog, has a great post about the verbification of the word blog — complete with graphs from Google’s wonderful Ngram Viewer, which pls clarify has raved about before.
In response to a reader’s complaint about the writer’s use of blog as a verb, Johnson writes:
Ouch, and touché. I will confess that, immersed as I was in geek culture, I used “blog” not only as a verb (which we in fact do fairly often at The Economist) but as a transitive one… . If our style-book editor learned of it he would surely roll his eyes and buy [the complaining reader] a stiff drink.
***
All the same, it’s clear that outside our little haven of linguistic purity, the verb “blog”, like “tweet” and “email”, is developing its own rules of syntax. You can “blog about”, “blog from” or just “blog” a conference (especially if you’re “live-blogging” it).
Personally, I’m not ready to use blog as a transitive verb (one with an object). I’m just getting comfortable using the word as a verb at all (as in, I started blogging in December). Using it transitively — as in, I blogged that event as opposed to I blogged about that event — sounds like an expletive deleted. Well, blog you then!
Besides, using blog transitively could lead to sentences like this:
My blog blogged your blog.
This blog blogs blogs about blogging.
For now, I’ll stick with the general/intransitive use of the still shiny and new verb blog, and I’ll use covered, wrote about or posted about that on my blog when referring to a specific subject matter. Once in a while, I may slip in a blogged about, but I’m not gonna blog any bloggety-blogged blogs. I’m just not that kind of girl.
My husband will find this all amusing. As he wrote in his Star-Ledger column this week, a few years ago I was making fun of him whenever he uttered the ugly, utterly geeky word blog at all.
Tune in tomorrow for an explanation of blog’s etymology.
(Image from Schoolhouse Rock)
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