#176380 - 04/25/08 10:04 PM
Re: Nouns as Verbs
[Re: Aramis]
|
member
Registered: 01/16/08
Posts: 155
|
Grow as a transitive verb in a business context is usually well understood and is no more likely than any synonym to offend with perceived connotations. It could be used in pompous statements, as could expand or any other synonym. Alone, neither pomposity nor any other quality of the verb's user would make its usage wrong.
Anyone hoping to start or grow a business might benefit from carefully cultivating business and personal relationships, or so the business networking formularizers tell us.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#176400 - 04/26/08 12:31 PM
Re: Nouns as Verbs
[Re: Jackie]
|
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/23/06
Posts: 3734
Loc: Netherlands, the Hague
|
Bingo! I was trying to make a reply . I thought it was the new LEGAL!!!! Vista on my new computer that confronted me with surprises. Woewh! This computer is no larger than a medium large dictionary. Soundless, smooth. Never thought I might ever get lyrical about something technical. But I still don't like the phrase. row grow grow your boat gently down the stream, Merrily , merrily , merrily merrily, Life is but a dream.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#176403 - 04/26/08 01:03 PM
bingo
[Re: BranShea]
|
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 04/03/00
Posts: 9568
Loc: this too shall pass
|
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#176406 - 04/27/08 12:47 AM
Re: Nouns as Verbs
[Re: BranShea]
|
old hand
Registered: 02/20/08
Posts: 1067
Loc: Tasmania
|
Bingo! I was trying to make a reply . I thought it was the new
LEGAL!!!! Vista on my new computer that confronted me with surprises.
Woewh! This computer is no larger than a medium large dictionary.
Soundless, smooth. Never thought I might ever get lyrical about something technical.
Grow grow grow your boat gently down the stream,
Merrily , merrily , merrily merrily,
Life is but a dream. Give it time. Vista has a habit of sneaking up behind you and biting you on the bum. Or taking you "up the creek without a paddle."
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#176427 - 04/27/08 04:14 PM
Re: Nouns as Verbs
[Re: bilkirk]
|
stranger
Registered: 04/27/08
Posts: 3
Loc: New Hampshire, USA
|
Ultimately we run into a problem I see once in a while (mercifully) in software design: one of infinite recursion, viz.--if we accept the premises that 1) any noun can be "verbed," and 2) any verb can be similarly "nouned," then each node's successor on the resulting family tree may be re-defined as its complement (noun-to-verb OR verb-to-noun).
While this practice may seem on the surface to be innocent and acceptable to most, consider it at its most potentially insidious: if a verb is "nouned" so be it, and the complement, a noun is "verbed," likewise. So far, we're still in Pangloss's best of all possible worlds.
Now take a verb, having been "nouned," and re-verb it. (And never mind the side trip about "reverberation.")
Or conversely, a noun, having been "verbed," and re-noun it. (And never mind the side trip about the state of being "reknowned").
The possibilities are delightfully absurd, perhaps enough to drive a Zen student through this koan to enlightenment.
As a machine having to process such constructs, or as an engineer having to design such a machine (to parse these and assign discrete meaning to them), the problem emerges: the process can go on infinitely, referring to (or should I say "referencing") itself with no specific end defined.
For stack-based machines, this infinite recursion will ultimately result in a "stack overflow" condition (exhaustion of available memory allocated for the stack). For register-based machines, it will ultimately result in the an "out of memory" condition (subtly different, exhaustion of all available free memory).
This is the reason I usually give for avoiding such delightful absurdities: I don't want to run out of available resources deciphering what this (potentially unknown recursively defined) new term actually means.
DTs
P.S. Apologies for not citing examples: the solution is left as an exercise to the reader--simply read any statement released by any government, military, corporate, "education," or other institutional official--such examples abound.
Edited by Delirium Tremens (04/28/08 09:04 AM)
Edit Reason: rephrased
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
7251 Members
16 Forums
12807 Topics
189591 Posts
Max Online: 853 @ 10/23/07 11:39 AM
|
|
|
0 registered (),
16
Guests and
19
Spiders online. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
|
|
|
|
|
Search
tsuwm you obviously have far too little to do!
Previous Topic
Index