Back in my day, people "played" games. Now they just "game." When did that happen?
Just asking.
El Skootro
How much does the change impact you?
It doesn't impact me in slightest. I'm just curious.
El Skootro
Chief Technical Officer
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Sorry that was a joke. Impact is a noun (and adjective) that has become a verb, and for some reason it drives me crazy.
"Impact" has been used as a verb since 1601. (Welcome to the 17th century!) It didn't have usage as a noun until 1781.
(But it's not an adjective in my dictionary. The adjective forms are "impactful" and "impactive." How do you use it as an adjective?)
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It happened when adults decided that they don't "play" games. It is too juvenile of a word for responsible adults to use and makes their hobby seem childish. But a husky "Yeah, I game every week with my buddies" sounds much less like a game of "G.I.Joes" and more like a beer and cards type of thing.
Just my opinion on it...
FH
Contributor
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I've called myself a gamer for 25 years or so. I think the term came about to distinguish playing rpgs etc as an adult activity, from playing, such as children do. I mostly use it out of habit and to distinguish that the games I play are not mainstream games like monopoly and risk. Of course lately I have heard gaming being used to describe gambling more and more often. I think in that case it may be a euphemism... like people who gamble are money-wasting addicts, but people who game come to our casino for fun and excitement.
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Contributor
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Sorry that was a joke. Impact is a noun (and adjective) that has become a verb, and for some reason it drives me crazy."Impact" has been used as a verb since 1601. (Welcome to the 17th century!) It didn't have usage as a noun until 1781.
(But it's not an adjective in my dictionary. The adjective forms are "impactful" and "impactive." How do you use it as an adjective?)
Figures... Impactful drives me crazy more than anything.
I use it as an adjective in 'impact crater.'
It happened when adults decided that they don't "play" games. It is too juvenile of a word for responsible adults to use and makes their hobby seem childish. But a husky "Yeah, I game every week with my buddies" sounds much less like a game of "G.I.Joes" and more like a beer and cards type of thing.
Just my opinion on it...FH
That's what I was leaning towards as well. Twenty years ago, not many 30 year-olds "played" games. Everntually they had to put away their childish toys and become adults. Today, there are video games that are rated "M for Mature." As it becomes acceptable for older people to "play" games, a less juvenile word needed to be created.
El Skootro
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Contributor
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I use it as an adjective in 'impact crater.'Sorry—that's a compound noun.
Vic, I bow before your superior wood-fu. I don't think I've even heard of a compound noun before. Is compound noun a compound noun, or is compound an adjective? I hope it's a compound noun, because I love things that are examples of themselves, if you see what I mean.
I need a better dictionary.
Of course lately I have heard gaming being used to describe gambling more and more often.That usage has been in place for hundreds of years as well.
Dictionaries are our friends!
Yes, but there's a difference between usage and common usage. Sam Spade may have "gamed some poor fella out of a night out", but there's a very different connotation to that than me saying "Tuesday is gaming night."
El Skootro
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Contributor
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Just went and looked in my dictionary, which is not the most comprehensive, and doesn't have a lot on word origins. It's the 1983 Gage Canadian English dictionary. It does have game as a verb, and describes gaming as gambling specifically. It lists impact as a verb, impacted as an adjective relating to teeth, but says nothing of impact crater. It lists compound as an adjective when used in the form of compound sentence or compound number, but doesn't list compound noun.
This is in no way intended to dispute Vic's info, just to make me feel better that my knowledge matches my main resource in this area.
Vic you're cracking me up.
Poor Scribe and his delusions. ;)
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Chief Technical Officer
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I don't think I've even heard of a compound noun before. Is compound noun a compound noun, or is compound an adjective? I hope it's a compound noun, because I love things that are examples of themselves, if you see what I mean.
"Compound noun" is indeed a compound noun. An informal (read: not entirely accurate) way to test is to try sticking an adjective in the middle, and see if it breaks it. For example, you can talk about a "huge impact crater," but an "impact huge crater" is clearly not right.
You can read more about compound nouns at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound. (I'm kind of wary of using wikipedia as a grammar reference, but the reference I'd choose—the Chicago Manual of Style—is only available online to members, and a quick glance at the wikipedia entry suggested it's pretty decent.
(You'll also find that "open compound" is an open compound.)
I love things that are examples of themselves, if you see what I mean.
Hippopotomonstrosusquipedalian! (adj-partaining to big words)
Dictionaries are our friends!
I read those for fun. Aren't I sad.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Yes, but there's a difference between usage and common usage. Sam Spade may have "gamed some poor fella out of a night out", but there's a very different connotation to that than me saying "Tuesday is gaming night."
According to my Merriam-Webster, the original, archaic meaning of the verb "to game" is "to lose or squander by gambling."
And "gaming," which dates from 1501, is defined as:
1 : the practice of gambling
2 a : the playing of games that simulate actual conditions (as of business or war) especially for training or testing purposes
b : the playing of video games
(I'm guessing that video games were probably not part of the usage in 1501....)
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Chief Technical Officer
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It lists impact as a verb, impacted as an adjective relating to teeth, but says nothing of impact crater.
To be honest, my Merriam-Webster doesn't list "impact crater" as a noun, either, but the Random House Unabridged and Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English both do.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Sorry that was a joke. Impact is a noun (and adjective) that has become a verb, and for some reason it drives me crazy.
Never did get the whole rant about "impact as a verb". What you mean is you don't like using it as a verb for "to have an effect on". Impact as in hit has been used as a verb for ages, and other forms of it longer than that.
Sorry that was a joke. Impact is a noun (and adjective) that has become a verb, and for some reason it drives me crazy.Never did get the whole rant about "impact as a verb". What you mean is you don't like using it as a verb for "to have an effect on". Impact as in hit has been used as a verb for ages, and other forms of it longer than that.
Lets kick Rambling Scribe a few more times now that Vic has him down.
This thread is a riot. Riot as in it's really funny.
I'm pretty sure it popped up when "players" started referring to themselves as "gamers". Logically, gamers... "game". :)
Playa playa from the Himalayas.
People between the ages of five and three hundred should never say that.
Back in my day, people "played" games. Now they just "game." When did that happen?
Just asking.
El Skootro
People used to go to parties. Now they go to PARTY!!! Such is the ever changing life of language. A language that does not change, grows stagnant and dies.
People used to go to parties. Now they go to PARTY!!! Such is the ever changing life of language. A language that does not change, grows stagnant and dies.Back in my day, people "played" games. Now they just "game." When did that happen?
Just asking.
El Skootro
No I agree. I'm not at all a language purist. I'm just curious as to when people started noticing the new usage.
El Skootro
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Contributor
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Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing? Now, it's something you do. It got verbed. Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.