Feb 02
Here’s another language thing that bothers me. Read this headline:
Student Tasered After Punching Florida Deputy
A taser is a device that tases someone. Therefore, when someone is the object of this device’s use, they are tased, not tasered.
C’mon journalism professionals, think a little bit. If I can get it right, so can you.
My .Mac Web Gallery
Loading ...
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I think you may be joking, but unfortunately I have no sense of humor, so I will quote the New Oxford American Dictionary:
“ORIGIN 1970s: from the initial letters of Tom Swift’s electric rifle (a fictitious weapon), on the pattern of laser.”
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:25 pm
I’m half-way joking. It’s really not all that important to me, but at the same time, I don’t think “tasered” is proper. It’s not common to say that someone was “lasered”, rather, people say, “shot with a laser”, or a similar variation. Both “laser” and “taser” have lost whatever common use they had as an acronym, as evidenced in the article, and the word now refers to the device that creates either the beam or the electric shock. Therefore, the -er postfix indicates the device is doing something, and the thing it’s doing is “tasing”.
February 4th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
It’s like Xerox or Kleenex anymore. The brand name has become the generic term. I wonder, though, if the AP style guide provided tasered as the proper usage.
July 8th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
You’ll lose if you want to be a prescriptivist when it comes to language and grammar. You may think there is no verb “to taser,” but if enough people use taser as a verb, a verb it is. That’s the beauty of English. We have no Academie Anglaise to dictate usage.