another slow day here in palookaville...

so I was trying to verify that William Safire really stated "you can verb anything," or words to that effect; but all I can find is this:
Quote:
THE FACT IS I THINK I am a verb,'' wrote the dying Ulysses S. Grant to his doctor, ''instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.''

The fact is I think he would have left us a punchier quotation without the first five words, but no editor stepped in to make it read ''I am a verb . . . .'' Even so, Grant's self-identification with a verb showed he understood the essence of that part of speech: action. No verb, no plot. You just sit and plan, like Gen. George B. McClellan. After a short period of decline, while wishy-washy writers in passive voices lolled around in dull, bureaucratic constructions (''the program was implemented''), the verb is back with a vengeance. Sixty-second managers shift to the active voice to snap, ''Implement this,'' and their bosses, two-second managers, bark a gutsier action word: ''Do that!'' The superboss, or split-second manager, says, ''Dotted-line the responsibility to him, and straight-line the reporting to the other guy.''

Huh? A dotted-line denotes a non-hierarchical relationship, as between two executives in the same echelon or on different levels exchanging information rather than direction, but a vogue verb in executive suites is ''to dotted-line it,'' which is a verb meaning ''tell him, but it's not an order.''

New verbs are being coined every day. Like body snatchers, the alien verbs are investing and seizing the souls of every interesting new noun. ''We're looking to fast-track that,'' Maine's Department of Transportation planning director Gedeon G. Picher told the Brunswick, Me., Times Record. Only yesterday, the fast track was one of the hottest nouns in chicspeak, until it was shunted aside and passed by the fast lane. Now it's up out of the cinders and back in the trendy running as a verb, to fast-track, and will soon be overtaken, if history repeats, by to fast-lane. (I detect a shading of difference: you fast-track a program, but fast-lane a person. Welcome to life in the fast language.) ''The last two cars of this train will not platform at Talmadge Hill,'' announces the conductor. Fred McClafferty of N.W. Ayer in New York sends that in, urging resistance, and adds that he will fight two other new verbs, to parent and to network. (That advertising agency is trying to style itself ''N W Ayer'' on its stationery, eschewing periods. The N.W. stands for Nathan Wallin, and the founder's name demands periods, but the graphic designers at the agency evidently do not platform at periods.) Other Lexicographic Irregulars wince at such back-formations as to surveille and to liaise, activities that the French might consider voyeurism, and some high-tech types shudder at to satellite or even to videotape. Julian Bercovici of Hollywood sends me a statement he received from Group W Cable announcing ''Service charges will be statemented the 22 of each month.'' A spokesman for the gas-station owners of New York was quoted as saying, ''There seems to be a tremendous movement to exodus the area.'' Here is one of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau's comments on the subway vigilante's case: ''We post-mortemed this thing to death,'' which is surely a case for the Squad Squad.

The verb invaders have accessorized the fashion industry, concertized around the world, funeralized their casualties, mainstreamed their thinking, leafleted their neighborhood and credentialed their coverage. (I know this because I've sourced it.) The new verbs threaten to angst-out their critics, as the new functional shift confuses the dee-fense.

What cooks with this rampant verbification of nouns -or, as the vogue-verb set would put it, what rotisses here? My colleagues in columny are also shuddering at the nominal body snatching: ''I think it's worth wondering about role models,'' wrote Ellen Goodman in The Boston Globe. ''Or about role modeling if you belong to the interfacing, accessing, networking school of verbing.'' Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times takes issue with an Atlanta editor who said fresh news ''mooted the story.'' Says Harold: ''I hoot at the moot.'' And Phil Gailey of The Times noted how governors like to sunset legislation and compliment each other for profounding the issues. Am I demagoging or cheap-shotting to suggest the vogueverbers are excessing?

Let us chew this over with William A. Kretzschmar Jr. of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, who edits The Journal of English Linguistics. He applies two tests to the functional shiftiness, one of newness, the other of logic and esthetics. ''Of commentate, for instance, I ask whether the form offers any new shade of meaning. I think it does, since the action of a commentator is specialized; we non-commentators can comment, but you commentators can commentate because of your special position and authority.''

In the same way, he likes administrate because he detects a shade of meaning different from administer. But he rejects orientate on esthetic grounds: ''It seems to me an ugly duplication of to orient.'' He'll buy a locution like ''lunches are satellited from the regional high school'' but does not countenance to dialogue because ''I find it impossible to see how any subject person or group could unilaterally impose a dialogue on or with somebody else.'' Linguist Kretzschmar adds: ''I shouldn't make such judgments, and should just believe in the doctrine of usage, but I can't help it - I won't abdicate my own right to decide what I am willing to say or write.''

Nobody can deny a nonce verb its moment in the sun, and sometimes they come to stay, though some people still grump about finalize. (Grump? From the noun grump, probably out of the verbs to grunt and to grumble. So why not use the old grumble? Because grumble kind of rumbles, and grump jumps and bumps.) David B. Guralnik at Webster's New World Dictionary is laid back about functional shift, which has roots deep in the language. The form it takes is largely accidental: civilize could as easily have been civilate, and pacify could have been paxilate. I asked him, if he had to decide what ending to use for ''to make a verb out of a noun'' -verbize, verbate, or verbify - which he would choose and why. The lexicographer, who has no trouble verbalizing, said: ''-ify, from the Latin facere, 'to make,' is specific; -ize, from the Greek suffix -izein, means 'to become' as well as 'to make'; -ate, from the Latin -atus, is not as specific as -ify. So I would choose verbify. Or just verb.''

Others, come to think of it, would also choose verb, with no suffix at all: ''Don't verb nouns'' is an obvious fumblerule. But where does that leave us? Should we hoot at the mooters, and despise prioritize?

My advice is to take it a case at a time.

Uniqueness counts. Does the new verb do a job that no other word does? I cannot think of an exact synonym for to cheap-shot. To exodus sounds silly, but it does not mean merely to exit, rather ''to leave in droves'' - I might use it, if I had not used a vogueverb in a previous page of copy, and if I had just used ''leave in droves.''

Esthetics counts. Prioritize strikes me as ugly, and priorify would horrify, probably because the word is used huffily by prissy people. Anybody who says, ''Nutshell this,'' ought to be boiled down, because such finger-snapping locutions have the ring of jargon. And overuse of the shift puts too many of your men in motion: you cannot party, host and R.S.V.P. in the same sentence without hangovering.

Tradition counts. If two words like make clear do the semantic trick, use them, or use a standby like specify or illuminate if that is precisely what you mean - but do not strain for disambiguate just to be in academic vogue. And before you reach for disincentivize, ask yourself - will discourage do? At the same time, if a new verb has lasted a few years, don't take it upon yourself to give it the functional shaft. To intuit, to babysit, to curate, to position all have made it out of noncehood, so start accessing them.

Copyright New York Times Company Oct 6, 1985

p s - I, also, would choose verbify.

-joe (you can verb any thing) friday