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Problem Verbs (And Gerunds)
Problematic because they are newfangled and ugly.
Error
Seen in a recent lawyer blog post: The court errored when …
Nope. It erred or made an error.
To paraphrase the poet, to err is human; to error is unforgivable.
Skill
We correctly refer to the skilled trades, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to turn skill into a verb.
Even worse are those jargony hybrids, reskill and upskill, and their derivatives reskilling and upskilling. (Can one ever downskill?)
You mean training, learning, acquiring new skills.
Vision
Typically a noun, but halfway to a verb in the dreadful visioning that people seem to be doing in (probably equally dreadful) team-building exercises.
One envisions, one sees.
Start the discussion!