‘Verbing weirds language’

Often the latest slang is rather ancient.
Calvin told Hobbes that “verbing weirds language” and I suspect he might be appalled at the use of ‘friend’ as a verb.
But would you believe that usage has around since the 1400s?
16 Words That Are Much Older Than They Seem
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That Jane Austen quotation from Pride and Prejudice on the new £10 note is a bit of a blunder
The line in praise of reading — “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!“ — was uttered by a deceitful Austen character who had no genuine interest in reading at all.
Uh-oh.
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The Problem With Summer Reading
“You read for its own sake,” a high school Engish teacher says. “To learn, to travel, to be spooked or heartbroken or elated. When reading becomes something that you authentically value, you become a better reader and writer without even trying…You take emotional risks, understanding that good writing is honest.“
Summer reading assignments are killing a love of reading.
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Writer and publisher Maggie Bonham needs help.
“Six days ago I was thrown from Rocket, a rescue horse of mine. I spent four days in ER and a hospital stay. The injury included a broken neck vertebra, huge bruises down my left side, and a dislocated right shoulder and elbow. I was found at the bottom of a 30 foot ravine wrapped around some deadfall. My horse was found 30 foot away scraped up and in pain, covered with wounds.”
She has no insurance and the health costs are crippling. You can help her by donating here.
Or if you want to do something for Maggie as well as support the business she has thrown her heart and soul into in the past couple of years, you could also go to Sky Warrior Books and buy a book.
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Good Writing vs. Talented Writing
I used to tell my students in a class I taught a while back that anyone can teach you how to write – the rules of it, the craft of it, where to put the verb and the noun and the (split) infinitive and the apostrophe. NOBODY can teach you to have something to say that is worth reading. You can write the most perfect prose in all the world and it can be as empty as a cloudless sky; if you pick a cloud to write about, THEN you have a story…
Or as Maria Popova says, “Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.”