Fascinated by a grossly-overused word

M'man Andy Naselli had a post on the Harry Potter books, in the meta of which I made some comments which were then roundly-ignored. But two comments after mine, a writer begins, "I am fascinated by the argument that...."

Oh. My. Gosh. "Fascinated"? Are you? Are you really?

So, the argument makes you drop everything, sit down limp and slack-jawed, and just ponder? Ponder in rapt engrossment, in helpless musing and reflection? Eyes glazed, all other activities or responsibilities forgotten, as this one concept holds you as a helpless captive?

Really?

The reason this poor soul came into my cross-hairs is that I am just saturated to bursting with the over-use of the adjective "fascinating." You aren't? Oh, then subject yourselves to fifteen minutes of Dennis Prager (if your head doesn't explode under the unceasing barrage of first-person singular pronouns), or of Michael Medved.

I mean, good heavens, how do these two men ever get anything done? EVERYTHING fascinates them! Everything! This argument, that point, the other subject; this book, that person, the other movie. It's all "fascinating"!

Nothing is mildly interesting, nothing is worth noting, nothing is of passing import. It's all "faaaaaaascinating"!

Honestly, how do you get through your day, when every single object of thought causes your hands to release what they are holding, your jaw muscles to let go, and your legs to collapse? When everything seizes hold of your undivided attention, keeping every power of the brain in a vicelike death-grip? How? How?

...

Okay, I feel a little better now.

I think the Inigo Montoya hypothesis is what most likely applies here — only not about the word "inconceivable."

Verb those nouns!

When I started listening to Tim Keller's talk at TGC 2009 (on which more, here), I was chuckling within two minutes.

Keller said they're going to talk about "how to steward the Gospel." There it is: "to steward"; as in I steward, you steward, he or she stewards.... Is that going to be the new evangelical buzz-verbed-noun?

The process of verbing nouns is an old one. Many Hebrew verbs are just verbed nouns. You'd just take a noun, and put it in the Pi`el, and voila! (or, more appropriately, hinneh!) A verb is born!

We do it flat-out with a lot of words. How many times have you heard (or, worse, said) "he didn't really exegete that passage"? But "exegete" is properly a noun. So is exegesis. So you'd really have to use the clunky "he didn't really perform exegesis of that passage," or something like.

Now, I find to my horror that "exposit" (as in "I will now exposit 1 John 1:1") actually is a verb, and an old one. So I'll have to correct my instinct to recoil at its use.

The maddening thing about English is that if enough people say something stupid long enough, it makes it into a dictionary. But then again, as a man once wisely said (of made-up words), "If you go back far enough, they're all made up." True, that.

But sometimes it can be funny when it shouldn't be. When I was taking prayer requests during a class I taught at Talbot, a brother who was a pastor mentioned that they had had to funeralize several people recently. It made me think of a woman I'd heard on Oprah (no idea how I'd happened on Oprah, so don't even ask), who mentioned having been "sexualized [i.e. molested in some way] several times.)

So you can verb any noun by simply adding -ize.

But as I said, people aren't even doing that today. Keller (mercifully) didn't say that we should stewardize the Gospel, nor (worse) that we should stewardshipize it. Just steward it. Be thankful for small mercies.

I wish I had saved a letter to the editor I read in the Calendar section of the LA Times decades ago. The writer was wryly responding to some passing discussion back then (it was in the 70s or early 80s) about how it was no longer proper to say that you are filming a movie, but rather that you are videoing it, or lensing it.

He said something like "This prompted me to chair my body, lamp my room, paper my typewriter [kids, ask your parents what typewriters were], and commence letter-to-the-editoring." He had more, and it was very funny.

Of course, as I've said, my least-favorite very-popular verbed noun is impact, in the sense of have an impact on. My reaction is always the same. It's properly an intransitive, but it is used as if it were transitive. I dont care if it's in a dictionary; when someone says, "That (sermon, book, article) really impacted me," I always say (if alone) "Eww!" Or perhaps, "I'm so sorry."

Because a wisdom tooth can be impacted; stools, bowels, and colons can be impacted.

But, properly, people aren't.

Or — merciful heavens — shouldn't be.