Woeful Words

Here's a grouse (and that word may typify just what I'm complaining about).

Are we seeing a trend for people to throw away existing nouns that we use and substitute verbs instead? For instance, what we might have called an expenditure seems to be called a spend. A demand is being called an ask, etc. (But then, where does demand come from?)

Or have we just always done this over the centuries? We've certainly messed around with trying to form verbs fron nouns: cities utterly flattened during the war were sometimes said to have been "coventrated", but this has fortunately disappeared. Perhaps they should have been "dresdened", anyway.

I'd generally take the view that where a new word (or a new usage) introduces a differentiation in meaning that wasn't there before, it should be accepted. For instance, we now have (on this side of the Atlantic) program for a set of computer instructions, and programme for a set of items to be presented (as in a concert programme). I have the feeling that a television or radio programme ought to be a set of viewing or listening items, rather than individual items, so that we ought to watch a programme of documentaries, rather than referring to each documentary as a programme. However, that one's gone long ago.

For sweet gooey fruity stuff in a jar, we use the terms jam, jelly or marmalade, which distinguish between ordinary fruity jam with the bits left in, fruity jam with all the bits strained out, and "jam" made with bitter peel as well as pulp from fruits such as orange, where the sweetness has a very bitter edge to wake up your palate at breakfast time.

Rock on, and let's hear it for finer shades of meaning!