"I like how your verbs that are things. I think I'm going to sandwich after I sofa here for a bit." Love it!

My Boys comes back in June. I am thrilled. Who did P.J. take on the trip? As you may recall--the possiblities were 1) The cute ex-cubbie, 2) Thoo-rn, the sing-songy named recently returned ex, 3) The adorable botanist. My vote: Bobby, the hookup turned friend, turned friend that she hooked up with--hes a peach.

On that note, recent article on msn: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=VerbsGoneWild&GT1=27004

Verbs Gone Wild Are we taking too many liberties with language?By Martha Brockenbrough
A while back, I wrote about the most annoying office jargon ever. And while that might have been a slight exaggeration, it is true that most people I surveyed despised the use of "dialogue" as a verb above all else -- including the vaguely dirty-sounding "low-hanging fruit."What's more, people chided me for failing to include "monetize," "productize," "incentivize" and other supremely grating words. And then I realized what these sucky little mosquitoes have in common.They're all verbs made from nouns. Or, as the experts say, they're "denominal" words.I have a least-favorite denominal word of my own: gifted. As in, "She gifted me with a designer knockoff handbag." I once even ranted about it to the Wall Street Journal on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. I called "gifting" all sorts of things that didn't get printed (and a few that did). After the fact, though, I turned to my dictionary, where I learned that my distaste was misplaced. Encarta links "gift" as a verb to the 13th century, where it comes from the Old Norse gipt. The Oxford English Dictionary, which traces usage in English, has found several appearances that date back to the 1600s. Something called "The Wife in Morel's Skin" says this: "The friendes that were together met He gyfted them richely with right good speede." I can't resist pointing out that the OED found a spelling error in this same dusty old sentence. "He gyfted them" was printed as "Be gyfted them." Oops! Careless scribes. It's tempting to say that sort of sloppiness goes hand in hand with the English abuse that is verbing.But I don't think I'd win that case. Shakespeare verbed -- with the word dialogue, no less. In Act II, scene ii of "Timon," he writes, "Dost Dialogue with thy shadow?" This is from 1607, just a year before "The Wife in Morel's Skin." If you're a writer looking to criticize language, you're not going to get very far by picking on Shakespeare -- unless your name is Stephen King, in which case you wouldn't bother anyway, because you're too busy building a fort out of money.This is too bad for my fellow gifting haters, and for fans of Calvin and Hobbes, who no doubt recall the classic "VERBING WEIRDS LANGUAGE" comic strip. Like it or not, we're living with a language that verbs words. What's that thing you use to get the dog hair out of the carpet? It's a vacuum, right? And when you're using it, you're ... vacuuming. Try to find a single word that means the same thing. Likewise, when you're putting butter on your bread, you're buttering it, no? Does anyone, besides a vegan or a dieter, have any objection to that? So the question isn't, "Is it OK to turn nouns into verbs?" We do this all the time. The question really is, "Why is it sometimes so irritating?" As far as I can tell, no one has conducted research into why certain words are annoying. That said, people have researched which nouns we tend to verb, and why. A 1998 paper written by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Michael H. Kelly argued there are two types of denominals -- ones that are rule-derived and relatively predictable, and ones that are idiosyncratically derived.For example, when we ride a bicycle, we say we are bicycling. When we ride in a boat, we are sailing or boating. There are exceptions, but you can see this is a pretty predictable -- and understandable -- way to extend our vocabulary. Other types of nouns aren't so easy. We know what it means to monkey around. But what does it mean to "iguana"? And why does "to fish" mean to catch a fish, but "to dog" means to chase tirelessly? That's what Kelly means by idiosyncratic derivation. You don't necessarily know the meaning of the noun once it's been verbed.And it's not just animals that are kooky. Foods can act that way, too. You can pepper someone with questions, for example. But what would it mean to oregano someone? Would that be a-salt? (Sorry for that. Sort of.)Kelly found that people are a bit more likely to verb a noun if it follows rules, possibly because it's easier for listeners to understand what we mean, and possibly because it's easier to invent them. And maybe, just maybe, that's the most important word of all here: inventing. English has more words than any other language. Who are language purists to block invention? What would we lose by ostriching? The next Shakespeare?That would be a pox upon us! Happy dialoguing.