when expressions go extinct

As I was listening to a discussion today on the ABC about the future of the Southern Bluefin Tuna, an expert in the area said they might possible go extinct if we don't work out whether we are overfishing this species.

I don't say "go extinct". I would normally say become extinct. I was surprised to hear the former phrase used on the ABC, and by an expert. I had noticed the same phrase used in the book I mentioned on 17 September, The Link, by Colin Tudge.

It appears I am behind the times, so I'd better adjust my vocabulary to the twenty-first century.

A quick Google search on the phrases 'go extinct/become extinct' comes up with a list of sites almost equally divided between the two phrases, but the interesting thing is that many of the brief summaries use both expressions interchangeably.

So maybe I can keep on saying it my way. My way is not extinct yet.

ghost writers in the sky

Okay, I couldn't resist heading this post with a feeble pun.

Today I read an article in The Age about the launch of a book by Mick Gatto, an autobiography. I think it's interesting that the launch featured three Mick Gattos; Gatto himself; the actor who played him in Underbelly, a recent televison series about gangland warfare in Australia; and, not least, the writer who ghosted the book.

The Australian says Gatto raced his story into print to get in before the producers of Underbelly produce a film about Gatto's life.

I think it's not often that a ghost writer is given a significant role at the launch of a book, even appearing as one of the major speakers.

Incidentally, the book was produced in only four months, according to The Australian.

Ghost writing must be a highly specialised skill, I reckon, because you have to write in another person's voice. For more information on this, there's a cross-posted report from the Edinburgh Book Festival on Hackpacker's blog.

yet more about the prefix be-

In searching out information about befriend as a verb, I came across a word I hadn't heard before - it's privative. I came across the word in the summary of an article about be- and bi- used as prefixes in verbs of deception, like beguile and betray. There's another word, bewray, meaning to divulge, reveal or betray, but that word's not used nowadays at all.

I think the article argues that this psychological sense of the prefix came about via an earlier privative construction, such as in bereave or behead.

A prefix can be privative. Hmm... What does that mean? I was beginning to feel completely lost, until I looked up the meaning of this new word. Privative, according to thefreedictionary, means 'altering the meaning of a term from positive to negative'. Yeah... getting beheaded would be a very negative experience.

And then, of course, there's privation, which sounds similar, so I'm going to remember this new word, privative, by comparison with privation and being deprived of something.

Well, I'll remember it for as long as I can - probably till tomorrow morning if I'm lucky.

use of the prefix be-

I'm still wondering about the difference between the verb befriend and the verb, to friend.

I thought I'd have a look at the meaning of the prefix be-.

The dictionary on my computer has this entry for be- in the formation of verbs:

• all over; all around : bespatter.
• thoroughly; excessively : bewilder.
2 (added to intransitive verbs) expressing transitive action : bemoan.
3 (added to adjectives and nouns) expressing transitive action : befool | befriend.
4 (added to nouns) affect with : befog.
• (added to adjectives) cause to be : befoul.
5 (forming adjectives ending in -ed) having; covered with: : bejeweled.
ORIGIN Old English , weak form of bī [by.]

It sure is a useful prefix.

And when I looked in The Word Museum, by Jeffrey Kacirk, I found lots of lovely old words that we don't use now:
beblubbered = swollen
begrumpled = displeased (Now that one is definitely going into my vocabulary.)
begrutten = showing the effects of much weeping (I hope I don't need that one in the near future.)
behounc'd = tricked out to look fine (You'll have to buy the book to track down the origin of that one.)

friend is not such a new verb after all

I've just noticed a post on LanguageLog Grammarphobia Blog about the verb friend. The post cites a history for the verb friend going back to 1225!

I love reading LanguageLog. What a coincidence that it has a post on the very topic I'm interested in right now.

befriend or friend?

I posted about the new word friend, a verb meaning to make friends with someone on Facebook. (I don't think I've seen this word used as a verb on Facebook itself, though.)

I was wondering why we don't use the existing word, befriend, but perhaps befriend has too specific a meaning:

verb [ trans. ]
act as a friend to (someone) by offering help or support.

Maybe when we friend someone on Facebook we don't want to enter into the complexity of a relationship that places any demands on us; we don't want to have to help out or support the other person. After all, the new Facebook friend might be someone we haven't seen for twenty years, someone we don't intend to see in person in the next twenty.

new word 'friended' slides into everyday parlance

Chad Taylor wrote an article in The Age newspaper last week about turning his back on Facebook because it no longer serves his needs. He said,

I liked it at first. I joined and was quickly “friended” by an ex-colleague…

and…

I didn’t “friend” strangers or celebrities.

It’s a relatively new word, friended, so it seemed logical to me that Chad Taylor would place it in quotation marks. After all, he’s a word-smith, a novelist.

But the third time he used it in his article, he didn’t put quotation marks around it. He said,

…but one of her friends was an editor whom I friended…

And that seems logical to me also. You can’t go on forever placing quotes around a word. If it’s going to make its way in the world, it has to stand on its own.

So Chad Taylor’s one-page article seems to me a microcosm of the absorption of a new word into everyday English.

(I'd like to have put a link to the article but you have to pay to read it, so I didn't do so. Oh, the joy of old technologies - I have a hard-copy on my desk, and I can re-read it as many times as I like, for free.)