Thursday, April 28, 2011

MIL-Speak, Version 2

Several weeks ago I posted here about the military's propensity for making verbs out of nouns or otherwise corrupting the conventional usage of language, a process I called MIL-Speak.  In that post I discussed the use of the words consensed (verb), footstamp (verb), offramp (verb), propensed (adjective), and churn (noun).

Well, I'm at another conference and the words are being abused again here.  Must happen automatically when you get a critical mass of military folks together in one place.  The egregious example today is the word "architect."  No, not the person who designs buildings.  I'm talking here about the act or process of designing something.  You know, the verb form, as in: "We are here to architect a new logistics system."

If I applied that same logic to Ultrarunning, I could come up with a whole raft of new words.  Rather than say that I'm stopping at this next aid station, I could just say, "I'm going to aid station here."  Or instead of drinking, I could say that "I'll water bottle now."  And if I'm going to change my footwear at a drop bag, I'd say "It's time to drop bag and shoe."

Or when it comes time to fill out an entry form for my next race, I'll simply have to corrupt the noun "entry" into a verb.  Never mind that we already have a perfectly functional verb, "enter."  Nope, I must instead say "I'm going to entry the JFK this year."

 

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