Language does,of course,change constantly,and the main dictionaries are more about describing what we get up to when using it than bossing us around by telling us what we should get up to. We seem to be at a point where,leaving aside leaving on a jet plane,“waiting times” and “waiting lists” are on the way out but not yet dead.
It may not be too late for a reversal in the de-inging trend of recent years,but,as a pessimist,I fear future generations will be less intimate with the delights of a comfortingly familiar “ing” and the way it rolls off the tongue as they wait for whatever they will be forced to wait for in life. How many other words are at risk of slow erosion in an uncaring world? Lots,that’s how many,but if it makes us feel better to have the occasional futile rant about the unstoppable,so be it.
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Of course,the perpetrators of corporate jargon haven’t helped. They’ve turned “spending” into the noun “spend”,as in,“The company’s annual spend on getting the silver tinsel bits out of the carpet after the office Christmas party has risen again.”
In my line of work,I’ve even noticed the “ing” disappearing in the odd news report about people accused of crimes. In one example,someone was “charged with import,access and distribute” the kind of material no one should be importing,accessing or distributing. A few added “ings” would have made a world of pleasing grammatical difference and caused not the slightest issue with the court system or the police (grammar or otherwise).
The Macquarie Dictionary people recently named “cozzie livs” the 2023 word of the year. The word of the year,by the way,is often not a single word in these dictionary exercises,which raises the question of whether dictionary doers are intent on redefining the word “word”.
As for “cozzie livs”,a warm and fuzzy way of referring to the neither warm nor fuzzy cost of living,it is yet another example of “ing” deprivation syndrome. Someone needs to start a campaign in favour of “cozzie living” before we all shift our focus to theOxford’s word of the year,“rizz”,which as a shortened form of “charisma”,was created without harm to any “ings”.
Yes,our language still overflows with words that use “ing”. They come as nouns,adjectives,verbs,even verbs functioning as nouns. Let’s keep it that way. Here’s the th---,sorry,thing:lose too many “ings” and you can end up in worse places than “cozzie livs” gets you.
Joanne Anderson isThe Age’s chief desk editor and the author ofWritely or Wrongly:An unstuffy guide to language stuff(Murdoch Books).
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