I have a question concerning the past tense of text (as in text messaging). Text used to be a noun, but now it seems to be gaining currency as a verb, and there seems to be a debate over the past tense. I personally hate "texted" -- it hurts my ear. One wouldn't do the same thing with "I sent a letter" (lettered). I would say "I sent a text last night," but it seems that even some dictionaries are jumping on board with "texted." What is correct? Thank you so much -- my friend and I are trying to figure this out!

Lori

It's a rather common phenomenon in English for words to change their lexical category, either by affixing (class > classify) or zero morphology (e.g., love was originally just a noun < Old English lufu but now is a verb, too). That having been said, what's wrong with text as a verb? It fills a need and eschews periphrasis. For what's it worth, texted gets 2.42M ghits.

Yes, zmjezhd, I see your point. I guess it's a logical leap (painful ear aside!)...

L

(painful ear aside!)

Over the years, I've noticed the reasons people give for the unacceptability of certain words, usages, meanings, etc. Grammatical, logical, semantic, and syntactic infelicities are the usual suspects, but to mind the only one I give pause to is aesthetic considerations in matters of usage. Take the oblique case of the pronoun who, whom. Its demise was mentioned by no less an English usage authority than HW Fowler back towards the beginning of the late, great, previous century, but people are still arguing about it and corrected one another, sometimes erroneously, here almost a hundred years later. I am personally not much bothered by folks saying who did he marry, while still managing to use the oblique form of who in written and spoken English. Though I have been a writer for a couple of decades now, I stop short of correcting people, except in a professional capacity as an editor (a job I do not relish and seldom do). I find that to do so in public just leads to ill feelings all around and that it is dangerous in private communication.

And how would one stop using it as a verb even if one could,
albeit hurting the ears. "Uncomfortability" hurts my ears, e.g.
when discomfort is more pleasing and correct, yet tell that to
anyone in the psychiatric/therapy interviews done in the media.

how about texd? flows a bit better to my ear, and we don't have enough words that have xd in them.

Makes a lot of sense to me. I cannot think of a single word with
and xd in it.
I remember when Esso wanted a new name, they researched all
the world's languages with a double XX before coming up with
Exxon, with the double XX found only in Maltese, but no
word similar to Exxon.
So I'll buy into it!

I like this solution!

L

New vebs entering the English language, by whatever route, are almost always weak/regular, i.e., forming the past tense by adding -ed. Even new verbs that are identical to irregular verbs in their present and infinitival uses will be regular if they are formed from some other part of speech. E.g., the baseball term fly out, which is flied out in the past tense because the fly is from the fly of fly ball. Even a verb like input, which is from the noun, is often seen as inputted in the past tense.

>we don't have enough words that have xd in them.

well, there's taxdeferred and ex-dividend just for starters.

New verbs entering the English language, by whatever route, are almost always weak/regular

What he said. The only exceptions to this are a few facetiously pedantic coined plurals, e.g., Vax, Vaxen, Unix, Unices, folk, filk, etc.

"new verbs" ??

"new verbs" ??

Sorry, I was thinking more along the lines of my answer above, generically covering all kinds of zero morphology in English: e.g., verbed nouns (or denominal verbs), nouned verbs (or deverbal nouns), nouned adjectives (deadjectival nouns). Examples of retroactively irregularized verbs might be dove for dived,

yep, there is.

smarty.

AS in: "I texd my messages on my cell".

It's been a verb since 1599:

NASHE Lenten Stuffe (1871) 15 A chronographical Latin table..in a fair text hand, texting unto us, how, in the sceptredom of Edward the Confessor, the sands first began to grow into sight at low water.

SHAKES. Much Ado V. i. 185 Yea and text vnder-neath, heere dwells Benedicke the married man.

DEKKER Wh. of Babylon Wks. 1873 II. 265 Vowes haue I writ so deepe,..So texted them in characters capitall, I cannot race them.

And looky there; a past tense. (emphasis mine)

I never said it wasn't legit, just didn't like the sound of it.

And I never said you said it wasn't legit. I was responding to SweetLoretta

If this etymology is correct, then eta's suggestion gains currency - it would seem as though the original verb is tex (or tech?) and text is just another way of spelling texed ("yea and text underneath" = texed underneath). So maybe we should change the verb to tex, past participle texed (or texd or text).
I tex. I will tex. I have text.

OED has it as a noun from Chaucer in 1369. It's from the Latin verb, texere but came through the past participle textus, used as a noun; as far as English is concerned the second t has been there from the beginning. The 1599 citation seems to be a late 16th century verbing of the noun.

I thought "text underneath" was a command (as in go ahead and text) since Benedicke is not yet married when he says it.
PS my favourite of his plays.