Some musings
When did color become so complicated? For example, what exactly is intense black, true black and midnight black? And what about extreme black? Do adjectives change the color black in any way? Is there a way to make black more black? I don’t see how it could. Black is black. However advertisers and writers of copy for the packaging of a variety of products with color choices are always trying new expression to enhance what they are selling. I suppose they believe that some adjectives add a bit of cachet, and no doubt why they are everywhere.
And don’t get me started on white. Wanting to paint a room white should not be complicated as far as I am concerned. That is until the guy who will be painting your walls asks you what shade of white. What? I said, a bit taken by surprise. Of course, it had been a while since I had wanted to paint a wall white and I failed to realize that the world of color had become sophisticated. I mean, I had to choose what shade of white I wanted: almost white, chalk white, newest white, and so on. I told the man that I wanted the classic white, but he insisted that it would be too white for the size of the room. What? “I think white is the paint color with the most variations,” he informed me. I don’t know about that! I mean, as a woman who wears lipstick I can attest to the fact that red has so many shades that it can make your head spin.
Anyhow, I let the man show me a whole range of whites. I felt somewhat silly because I could not detect much variation from one to the other. In the end I let him choose and I am very satisfied with the result of simply white. Who knew!
I must be showing my age when I wonder when nouns became verbs. I certainly never learned in school that, for example, “he friended me” or “defriended me” would be a common term. The Oxford University Press talks about the “verbing” of English.
In this day and age, we email, we text, we message, we google, and as you read this you know that I blog. In short, verbing is very much part of the digital world. “I facebooked you. Let’s coffee.”
Fooding is another example of verbing especially when people are asked: Do you salad or do you sandwich?
Where is it going to end? Were I a noun, I would be inclined to revolt.
