verbing for the greater glory of man

[rone]

Nix: So if I wanted to get really *fast* at wiiing (damn horrible made-up words that don't fit English)...
Steve VanDevender: You took a noun and added "-ing" to it to make a verb.  What's more English than that?

Comments

[morrisa.livejournal.com]

IMHO, most men are pretty fast at weeing.

[mopti.livejournal.com]

"Verbing"? Surely it should be "verbising"??

[fredfred.livejournal.com]

pedant: it's actually a verbal noun (rather than a participle, or +ing form of the verb). They look the same but they're structurally different.

So actually you took a noun and verbed it and then noun-ed it back.

Wii -> verbed (I wii, he wii, you wii) -> nominalizing +ing (Wiiing is fun)

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

Having recently viewed, as part of my ongoing effort to keep my mind occupied with trivia to distract myself from my empty doomed existence, an Oxford Dictionary-affiliated web page discussing the lack of triple vowel repetition in English, I can confidently claim that Wiing (akin to seer or fleer), Wiiïng, or Wii-ing, would be more English than that (Wiiing).

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

Edit: since you can't just apply hyphens willy nilly, the "wii-ing" formulation may be out. Wiing is too boring, so clearly the only correct choice is the steampunkish Wiiïng.

Remember, though, that English is not one of those languages like German where you can just throw forms together to make your own words. You need a minting permit, rarely granted to those who aren't lexicographers or famous authors, to form new compound words or apply prefixes or suffixes to roots that have not had that particular prefix or suffix applied before. Unpermitted (or un-permitted) writers must use hyphens to avoid illegal joins. However, attaching the -ing suffix is forbidden even with use of a hyphen, because it is a violation of safety standards for unpermitted writers to combine verbing and gerundification in a single step, which, as fredfred has pointed out, is what has happened here. Once a qualified verber has verbed a word, the "ing" form immediately becomes legitimate as well, so no hyphen is needed.

(All claims certified factual by my ego.)

[epileptikitty.livejournal.com]

Good lord, you people! It's called gerundinging.