It's not an idiom, it's correct. 'Turning' is perfectly OK as a gerund. 'ing' appears in three places in Engish - as a gerund, as a progressive tense - both of which involve adding 'ing' to a verb, and as a noun-forming modifier for which I cannot find the correct terminology. The latter case involves adding 'ling' to a non-verb to produce a commonly-diminutive noun. Examples include underling, sapling, darling, sidling (which produced the verb sidle as a back formation). It used to be side-ling - i.e. someone who stands at your side as opposed to a subordinate under-ling. But of course given a variety of words ending in 'ing' it isn't always apparent that some were fromed from the 'ling'-route rather than the verbal 'ing'-route. The 'l' is a useful indicator, but not 100% reliable.
Well, it's gone like clockwork so far - all bar the phone line (again) so I may not be able to post much for a bit. Keys arrived, then a van of stuff (including a sofa) which was brought up the stairs by two burly Mancunians. Then a couple of car loads of stuff, followed by a bed, which was brought up the stairs by a burly Edinburgher and further assembled by him. Which was just as well, cos it would have taken us about five hours and we'd have done a really rubbish job of it too. Boxes of stuff still arriving in dribs and drabs, and we're slowly finding places to put all their contents. Nothing's yet come off in our hand or fallen off the wall or ceiling. The heating and shower works, the loo flushes... so pretty smooth so far I would say. I have, however, discovered muscles I never knew I had. Living on the top floor of a tenement block must be good for you, surely.
[rab] Good luck an' all in your new home. The loo *might* flush, but just check it. My mother discovered the loo in her new bungalow flushes with water from the hot water system. (Have I mentioned this before?)
We don't seem to have any team games on the go at the moment. Anyone up for a - let's say a three way split, he says, trying to second-guess the likely number of players. Puce - Green - Chartreuse are I believe the traditional colours for such a split.
I read the other day that "miniature" (and the "mini-" prefix) comes from "minium", Latin for red. This refers to the small red lettering on a miniature portrait or similar. I'm going to look this up now, just to check. Incidentally, that doesn't pardon 6 quiz teams of staff from our local primary school being unable to spell "minuscule", despite the fact that it was on my son's spelling list 2 years ago (aged 8). Not one team got "manoeuvre" right, either.
OK, I've looked it up, and: Yes, miniature does derive from miniare (to colour red), from minium (red lead). Mini- is listed, however, as deriving from miniatureandminimum, from minimus (least). I think I need to do more research to ease my troubled mind.
Have we ever played 'Shipping Crescent, To The Ends of The Earth', with a winning move, Dogger? Faster play during good visibility, obviously, and headwinds take the LV equivalent down a notch. And watch out for those South East Iceland loops. Shipping areas here.
[Rosie] Indeed, not one team got those words correct. They did marginally better with "accommodation", "Massachusetts" and "knowledgeable". However, I think only 1 team got "diarrhoea" right. I've done much harder spelling rounds in the past; admittedly that was for quiz addicts, and once was deliberately written to prevent a certain team winning, because I knew they would play their joker on a spelling round. I put in words like "eschscholtzia", "waqf" etc. just to screw them up :-)
A mnemonic a teacher at school taught us several years ago: Dashing In ARush, Running Hard, Or Early Accident. You'll never forget how to spell diarrhoea again!
My own Mum's prim version was "Air raid backwards". The opposite was "knobs". It was all "po". (SM) Yes, but what do S-K-W-I-T-S stand for? The SHITS, by the way, is a section of the band of the Irish Guards who call themselves the Society of Harmonious Irish Tunesmiths. This is true.
[Darren] No, it's been raining as heavily up there as down south. Never mind a raincoat, yesterday afternoon I wished I'd brought a bucket and spade to work.
I'm getting bored of saying this now. I have more free time than I know what to do with, but instead of doing something useful with it, like learn Russian, I'm going to play MC until I vomit. Hoorah!
I can say 'Here is my passport' in russian. ... and 'How are your parents' in portuguese. I'd do well if I was dropped in the middle of Europe wouldn't I?
Following on from the Eight Words Game, did anyone watch the '50 Greatest Comedy Sketches' programme a few days ago, and did it seem to anyone else that the funniest sketches were all 30 or 40 years old (Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise, Monty Python etc.)? I don't know who the public were that voted, but they didn't ask ME.
How about a two or three way team game? Puce v Chartreuse or Puce v Green v Chartreuse? I wouldn't advocate more than three teams - we don't really have enough players.
[pen] I was about to ask "How many of those do you think there'll be?" before scanning down see the game made and very well underway. [SM] Sounds good - it seems like Crescent games aren't taking off at present and perhaps that would make it more interesting.
The Panel tends to get a bit shirty if it thinks you're starting a reheat of something old and tired. Placing old wine into new bottles sometimes helps.
[pen, Phil] Indeed, "verbing weirds language" - but a six-year-old or anyone else being silly should be allowed to. Serious usage of something like diary as a verb is definitely something we'll all get flighty about. We should be touched rab thought of us though.
I can't get to mcios this morning. Anyone else having any trouble? (More generally, the internets seem to be very slow here in France, but I can reach most sites.)
In "verbing weirds language", it's not a noun that has been verbed (as a noun, "weird" means "fate"), but an adjective. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another example of this formation - but I'm sure I'll now be inundated with verbed adjectives that are unbelievably obvious.
I wonder if those arrested for attempting to bomb Lonodn-US flights this morning waited deliberately until Tony Blair was on holiday and John Prescott was in charge?
[pen] I doubt if one blithering idiot is more likely to be of use to the nation than another in an emergency. Thanks for bringing the news to my attention though - I didn't know anything about it till now.
[challenge] I actually think instances of verbed nouns-not-usable-as-adjectives are even rarer than instances of verbed adjectives-not-usable-as-nouns. However, I did find an example of a verbing of a non-adjectival noun: You can tree a cat. BTW Calvin's only 12 years younger than I am. He'd be 26 sometime this year. Yeesh!
[SM] I live and learn - I'd never seen "tree" as a verb before, other than in the sense that "the copse was heavily treed", but have found now found it in the dictionary. I may have to try and get this sense into normal conversation tomorrow
(Phil) I hope it doesn't replace "woooded". I agree "ornate" as a verb is monstrous when "ornament" already exists as a verb. (SM) How do you tree a cat? Stick a twig up its bum? You'll be lucky. I can see how you can de-cat a tree, though, even if it might need the Fire Brigade.
[Phil] I never saw it before, until I googled it in a spirit of misunderestimation. The OED has it as an obsolete verb, which I suppose is why an antiquarian map dealer might use it to ornate his prose. But as Caxton writes, "Somtyme ornatynge of wordes maketh the proposycion to be withdrawen fro the trouthe."
It's usually mixed up in some way to even both sides out. Things have quieted down. Dual the A11!
Is the interesting thing about these words simply that they don't appear to have been verbed in the 'normal' way - i.e. by an apparent change in the spelling? After all, it presumably doesn't count in the noun-to-verb category to include the verb "to shelve" since it isn't "to shelf", whereas "to tree" involves no spelling change (although I think some linguists would argue there is a morphological change by virtue of the change of use). In these non-spelling-change cases, it's presumably for some other reason that they appear the same when verbed... You can verb "thick" by spelling it "thicken", whereas "thin" doesn't lend itself to being spelt "thinnen".
[Non-adjective verbings] Saki has an instance of the verb "to sky", meaning the practice of putting the paintings of lesser artists higher up on the gallery wall, above better-regarded work.
Nounish verbings: beach, ship, dog, horse, house, caravan, cup, motor, earwig. "Some to think of it," he umbrella'd, "there aren't many words you can't slip in as a substitute for 'said'."