When I was looking for Boss earlier this afternoon, I entered the UVSC Bookstore to discover him but instead heard a young fellow inviting his female friend to come "hot tubbing" with him this evening. In all likelihood, she is in a hot tub with the gent now. I have one slight problem with all of this, maybe it's a mind battle with colloquialisms.I may be incorrect, but a person cannot actually "hot tub." Though it is true a man, woman, or an it, can enter or descend into a hot tub, a person cannot "hot tub." Colloquially, it is possible to do just about anything but alas I cannot bring myself to conquer this lion for the sake of the future nerd babies of my loins. I simply remained baffled by sweaty, figure-hugging, informal, water-time-space-sharing a la "hot tubbing."
I remain yours, yet pretentious as a lamb in foggy London.
1 comment:
The source of your jilt is directed at a pretty common phenomenon in the evolution of languages: the verbing of nouns. These vibrating objects are all over the place. "To google" is a an example of perhaps even a more contemporary species than the one you identify, but there are many more that are probably invisible and unconscious in speech: toe the line, foot the bill are among some of the more obvious. There's a great article by Geoffrey Nunberg in his book, Going Nuclear, that covers the topic.
Good day!
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