A Trending Irritant

[curate]

Has anyone else noticed the invention of this new non-word babble-speak adjective? FaceBook and MSN (and probably others who should know better) have started plastering their Web pages with "trending articles", and I believe Twitter has "trending topics". I would guess that it's a fanciful replacement for "popular", but could I be mistaken and it means something else?

Merriam-Webster says

trending present participle of trend (Verb) Verb: 1.(esp. of geographical features) Bend or turn away in a specified direction.
2.Change or develop in a general direction

which would suggest that we've witnessed a verb mutating into an adjective.

David

[CaptainBazza]

Bend or turn away in a specified direction.

AKA digression?

1: the act or an instance of digressing in a discourse or other usually organized literary work
2 archaic : a going aside
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A recognised trait in train sim forums. Not always a bad thing.

Example (mine):
This digression is trending towards the ridiculous.

Cheers Bazza

[davejc64]

I wonder how long it will be before they stop teaching English in schools and start teaching Internet/Text English instead, you have to fear for the human race sometimes!

[gswindale]

It is just the language developing isn't it?

I could, if I could be bothered, write a response in 18th century English, but I'd hazard a guess that the majority of people would struggle to understand it.

We've seen the language mutate due to our friends across the Atlantic and down under, so why shouldn't it change here as well?

[davejc64]

Where as most things tend to evolve, the English language tends to devolve, maybe it fits with the tendency to dumb everything down these days!

[Rockdoc2174]

Languages mutate or we'd all still be speaking in something even earlier than Proto-Indo-European and every person on the planet would speak the same language. English speakers have tended to be less concerned about it than some cultures, although I have to admit to finding some new forms disagreeable. Although it's been proposed a number of times there's never been an attempt to set up an English equivalent of the Academie Francais. For all the efforts of that august body to keep French pure, you still get le bulldozer, le sandwich and le weekend in common use despite the Academie offering its replacements.

Some words arrive and stick because they fill a need. Other sparkle and burn out because they're only a fashion. The Inky Fool Blog is a mine of information on such matters.

Keith

[rufuskins]

There's a hint of 1984 here, which whilst Big Brother wanted people like Winston Smith to re-write history to support Big Brother, there was also a department which was responsible for replacing OldSpeak with NewSpeak!

All I want is that when people apply for jobs they write in reasonably grammatical English with words spelt correctly - whatever words they chose.

By the way I accept that I am not perfect in this area myself.

Alec

[terrycunliffe]

As the Olympics approach, we are drawing ever closer to being bombarded by that horrible, irritating made up adjective "Meddled" by the commentators. (the act of winning a medal)

Meddling with what....... whom!

[FoggyMorning]

I read somewhere that Dr Johnson is almost single-handedly to blame for the standardisation of the English language. There are a few of these evolutions of usage that I find irritating personally; I cringe when I see:

• Words typed without any consonants ("Txt spk")
  "Probably" mutilated to "prolly"
  "Of" instead of "Have" (as in "Shouldn't have")
  "You're" instead of "your" and other misapostrophisations

[ashgray]

I read somewhere that Dr Johnson is almost single-handedly to blame for the standardisation of the English language. There are a few of these evolutions of usage that I find irritating personally; I cringe when I see:

• Words typed without any consonants ("Txt spk")

Or even vowels....

Ash

[davejc64]

Getting the youth of today to say or write anything, even slightly coherent is quite a feat, I for one, don't envy teachers their job!

[yerkes]

A verb mutating into an adjective sounds like a gerundive*. In which case there's nothing new. haec olim meminisse iuvabit and all that.

* OK, so it isn't really. But I bet most kids these days have never heard of one!

[FoggyMorning]

I read somewhere that Dr Johnson is almost single-handedly to blame for the standardisation of the English language. There are a few of these evolutions of usage that I find irritating personally; I cringe when I see:

• Words typed without any consonants ("Txt spk")

Or even vowels....

Ash

Yes. Quite!

[gswindale]

I read somewhere that Dr Johnson is almost single-handedly to blame for the standardisation of the English language. There are a few of these evolutions of usage that I find irritating personally; I cringe when I see:

• Words typed without any consonants ("Txt spk")

Or even vowels....

Ash

Yes. Quite!

Don't you mean
Ys. Qt!

[CaptainBazza]

Txt speak is a perfectly acceptable of communication when used for, ummm, short text messages. Text speak is not new, it's been around for a couple of hundred years, predating even the wired telegraph. I std usg it in '64, as prt of mi jb as rdo op, so thr!

Cheers Bazza