Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Some good verbs

Every now and again, I look at traffic patterns for this blog ... especially how people get here. Just a month or two ago, those were largely random searches for strings that happen to appear here — don't even bother asking. Now, to the delight of the residents of Verbtown, it looks like most hits are coming from people who've bookmarked us, or reached us through links on linguistics various blogs. The little street through our neighborhood has some traffic.

Just now, instead of working on one of the several serious ideas for posts that are bubbling in my aged brain, I checked on these referrals and found this google search:
what are some good verbs
Got your answer right here: Mrs. Verb, now she's a great Verb. It's not her real name, of course, and if it was, it'd be her married name. But she's great. And at the Verb family reunion (coming up soon back in Springfield), everybody says "now, she's a good one." And my great uncle, Daniel Webster Verb, he was good too. Served in WWI, like his grandfather, who fought honorably for the Union. Of the kids, well, our youngest daughter is of course the apple of our verbal eye. Not such a big 'doer' (see graphic), but cute as a button.

So, random google searcher, those are some good Verbs. I guess there are some bad Verbs too, but you didn't ask about them.

9 comments:

Brett said...

If we're going for bad verbs, currently I think 'bifurcate' really sucks.

BTW, I called Mr. Verb "variously characterised", with an S. The zed just throws off the whole aesthetic, don't you think?

Anonymous said...

I wrote a post a while ago about the Australian government's plan to subject immigrants to mandatory English proficiency tests. I still get traffic from people who have searched things like 'why can't canadian immigrants speak english' and so on.
I agree, the 'z' does throw off the whole æsthetic.

Mr. Verb said...

Even as somebody who talks about trees alot, I agree that 'biifurcate' sucks.

And the offending zed has been changed — I've gotten so used to British editors regularizing/regularising my spelling that I didn't even notice. I recently had a conversation with a Canadian who edits a major journal (with much more American and more UK stuff than Canadian material coming across his desk), and he was pretty flexible about most conventions, but was insistent about having the 'u' in 'colour', while I think he preferred the American variant on '-ize'.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Verb! I never thought you would side with those who think the word 'bifurcate' sucks. Aren't all verbs precious?

Mr. Verb said...

Gee, I guess you're right, Anon ... I should stand up for all verbs everywhere. We are where the action is, of course.

And I should probably spell 'bifurcate' with only one 'i' at any rate!

Anonymous said...

But Mr. Verb, what about the unborn verbs? Nouns are just little pre-verbs, waiting to be -alized.

Anonymous said...

what the hell?!!

Anonymous said...

what the hell is this website furr??!!!

tummble said...

if any of you all want to learn verbs in a fun way look up" school house rock - verbs'' on youtube.