Just a take-note-of thing. Not that it’s getting on my nerves or anything…

In this one day, I have been subjected, via various media, to the following nouns being used as verbs:

• Impact — the granddaddy of them all, which you’ve heard me gripe about before. I actually heard this come from the mouth of a professional announcer, on PRI’s “To The Point,” I think it was.
• Advantage — Interview subject on NPR this morning.
• Disadvantage — Same young woman this morning. She kept going back and forth between saying something “advantages” one person and “disadvantages” someone else. Torture.
• Partner — A press release from a local nonprofit, which I will not name, out of kindness.
• Gift — A subscription promotion from Boston Review, which I received via email (see above — note that they did it twice!). Look, folks, this is simple: A gift is a thing that you give. You don’t “gift” a gift; you give it. Got it? (It’s like “lend” and “loan,” only more so.)

Sorry. After the fifth one in one day, I had to say something. I wasn’t trying to find them; they found me.

Oh, and spare me the citations proving that these usages are OK. They’re not. Authorities who say otherwise are wrong. I speak ex cathedra as the ultimate authority within the universe that is this blog.

Recently, The State led an editorial off by citing a headline in the Charleston paper:

A RECENT HEADLINE in Charleston’s Post and Courier asked: “Could Bobby Harrell’s departure impact Charleston’s road money?”…

I read no further, but immediately emailed Cindi Scoppe to say, “The answer to the P&C’s question is ‘no,’ because ‘impact’ is not a verb. (I later went back and read the edit. You should, too; it will make you feel even better about Jay Lucas being the new speaker.)

But I’m still harrumphing about the P&C headline.

Then, this morning, I saw a Tweet that said:

SCOTUS’ Same-Sex Marriage Decision Could Impact SC

To which I could only respond, “No, it could not — because ‘impact’ is a noun, not a verb. :)”

I added the smiley face because the Tweeter does not know me. Wouldn’t want her to think I’m an unpleasant person or anything.

Yes, I know I’m fighting a losing battle. I know that people who employ this abomination think that it is a verb, and can probably cite all sorts of authorities to support them. Doesn’t matter. I refuse to accept it.

There is something about “impact” used as a verb that for me invokes the most stilted, bogus, officialese. People think it sounds authoritative, official, like something an expert would say. It’s like, I don’t know, cops calling everyone a “subject,” or saying they “observed” the “subject” doing this or that. I actually don’t mind that as much, though — I can appreciate a cop trying to distance themselves from the incident with technical, unemotional language. “I observed the subject exiting the premises at a high rate of speed,” sounds more like the voice of law and order than, “I saw that stupid jackass with my own eyes, running off like a scalded dog.”

But “impact,” used as a verb, affects (note the way I used the right word there) me differently. Every time, I hear the voice of someone who is trying to sound smart, but instead is coming off as illiterate. To me, anyway.

Yeah, I know I’ve mentioned this before. But it bugs me every time, and sometimes I just have to say something…

What’s the news across the nation?
We have got the information
in a way we hope will amuse… you.
We just love to give you our views:
La da de da!
Ladies and Gents, Laugh-In looks at the news!

— “Laugh-In”

Just a little verbal peeve I need to get off my chest.

This may be my imagination, but it seems to me that starting, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago, I started seeing stuff like this:

In two-dozen interviews, the denizens of Wall Street and wealthy precincts around the nation said they are still plenty worried about the shift in tone toward top earners and the popularity of class-based appeals. On the right, the rise of populists including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz still makes wealthy donors eyeing 2016 uncomfortable. But wealthy Republicans—who were having a collective meltdown just two months ago—also say they see signs that the political zeitgeist may be shifting back their way and hope the trend continues.

“I hope it’s not working,” Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and major GOP donor, said of populist political appeals. “Because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.”

Yes, as Slate, which called this passage from Politico to my attention, says, this is a billionaire comparing people concerned about income inequality to Nazis. I suppose. Frankly, I find what he’s saying a little hard to follow, based on that snippet.

But that’s not what I’m concerned about. I leave the class warfare to others. I’m bothered by that phrase, “around the country.” I suppose it’s pretty harmless, but it still bugs me that increasingly, it seems, people say it when they mean “across the country.”

“Around the country,” to me, suggests an area that runs along the inshore parts of the Atlantic from Maine to Florida, runs around Key West and comes up along the Gulf coastline to the southern tip of Texas, then up the Rio Grande and through the northern states of Mexico, runs up the Pacific past Seattle, then passes through the southern territories of Canada, back to Maine.

Whereas “across the country” involves the physical land mass of the country itself. New York, L.A., St. Louis, Kansas, New Orleans, Chicago, Nashville, Wyoming, etc.

Yeah, I know we’ve always said “around town” and understood it to mean here and there within the town, and not just its perimeter.

And I also realize that “around the country” may be an attempt to say here, there, and everywhere in the country, rather than just hopping across the country from one coast to the other, leaving out “flyover country.” They’re trying to say that the country is more than just a straight axis drawn from one point to another. Or something.

But it still seems awkward to me, and almost as though it were something being said by a person whose first language isn’t American English. It’s not, to my ear, the accepted idiom. Or it wasn’t. That seems to have been changing lately.

Is this just me? Probably…