Verbing a Noun, or Sock of Doom, part 3

My dad was a writer, news editor, proofreader, grammar guru, and a good guy. He taught me most of what I know about reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and editing, along with the regular Dad-daughter stuff.

One of his peeves was the verbing of nouns. In other words, taking a perfectly good noun, and using it as a verb. For example, a 'gift' is a thing you give to someone. You don't 'gift' something. "I gifted her a set of china" is as silly as "I pied her in the face". Now, throwing a pie in someone's face, that's funny. Pie-ing them just sounds funny.

I'm not a purist like my Dad. While I eschew the verbing of nouns as a general rule, I allow for a little wiggle room. I don't say 'gifting', but I do say 'regifting'. I think it's a funny word, and a funny concept. And if something is funny, it's all good.

So, with that exposition, I can say that today I gusseted the Sock of Doom. Yes, folks, the S.O.D. now has a heel and gussets. It's beginning to look a lot like its big sister. I'm tempted to say "I'm past the danger zone", but I won't. You didn't read it here. No. Nyet. Non. Because then the knitting goddesses, who tend to be fickle, might just have a laugh at my expense. And that kind of laugh, that kind of funny, is not all good.

That kind of joke doesn't laugh me. It sorrows me.

Sock of Doom update (sort of) and Shoes of Doom

The update on the Sock of Doom is that there is no update. Not that I haven't been making progress on it, just that I don't dare make any comment lest I inadvertently put a curse on it. Sometimes I think a dybbuk* has interfered.

On my way home from work today, I noticed quite a few roadside shoes. No doubt you have seen them, lone shoes on the shoulder amidst the empty Tide bottles, hub caps, broken taillights, random bumpers, mattresses, sofa cushions, broken-down 1970 Mercury Marquises, and the like. What are your ideas about how they get there? Have you ever lost a shoe to Roadside Purgatory?

I always imagine that many of them get lost by motorcyclists, or by people with their feet out the window. When you look for it, you see more people with their feet out the window than you'd think.

What other options could there be? Knocked off when a roadside motorist fixing a tire gets hit by a car? Flung out the window by snotty older brothers? Thrown at George W. Bush? Hurled in a rousing game of Whose Shoe Can Hit the Cop Car?

Put your entries in the comments.





*You can look it up. Or watch the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man.