Yes, yes. Before you start – I know that devolution is not the opposite of evolution and that devolving language is not the black to evolving language’s white. However, as we saw in a previous post, when the American nation attempted to convince me that ‘bulletize’ and ‘big-businessification’ were words, language does appear to be quietly decaying, and this is because we have devoluted its care to those who are, quite obviously, not up to it. (See n. American.)
(Yes, yes (again). Devolved. I know.)
Anyway, today, in the course of my day job, I was sense-checking a quite technical document. One to do with measurement and encryption. One in which a – I assume – normally quite sane person had used the not-word ‘zeroise’. As in ‘after generating the result, zeroise your machinery’. I think it is probably intended to mean ‘reset’ or ‘return to zero’.
Three points, if, dear blog snorkellers, you can be bothered.
1) Zeroise is not and never will be a word. If it used, however, it will pass into language. Use it and it will be spoken
2) The person who used it was not an American. So maybe I’m being a bit harsh on Americans. Or maybe it’s that they’re trying to idiotize the rest of the world
3) It was used in a PowerPoint presentation so, yes, it was bulletized
Let’s try and hold out against the nonsense, people.
thewordmonger 