verse
verse – verbo
Versing Colombia will be tough because they are a very skilled team who dominate the ball very well.
In this event there is a lot of competition, we are versing Division I schools so it’s a good experience for me.
With apps like ESPN Scorecenter and Yahoo! Fantasy, people really only care about their own teams and players along with those they are versing.
I wouldn’t want to verse him these days – I’m worried he may beat me.
In questo blog abbiamo spesso preso in esame verbi che si sono trasformati in sostantivi e viceversa, e talvolta aggettivi che hanno assunto funzione di sostantivi. Non capita spesso che una preposizione si trasformi in un’altra parte del discorso, ma questo è proprio quello che è successo al verbo su cui ci soffermiamo oggi, to verse. Usato principalmente dai ragazzi per dire play (against), o fight, nasce per retroformazione dalla preposizione versus, ovvero ‘contro’. Il contesto tipico di versus e relativa abbreviazione vs è quello degli incontri sportivi; si pensa che i giovanissimi abbiano frainteso la categoria grammaticale del termine prendendolo per un verbo e coniugandolo abbiano eliminato la fine in -us che ne avrebbe reso difficile la pronuncia. È da notare che tale uso del verbo non è prerogativa dei ragazzi, sul net se ne trova ampia dimostrazione e anche qualche dizionario convenzionale comincia ad accettarlo.
Origini del termine
Nei dizionari, il significato di to verse come verbo è quello obsoleto di ‘comporre versi’; ma il senso di cui abbiamo parlato finora non è una novità: in un post del 2012 sul blog Language Log il linguista americano Mark Liberman ne attestò la presenza negli anni 1980, e probabilmente l’uso risale agli anni 1970. Sembra che scompaia e ricompaia ogni tanto senza mai essere accettato del tutto nel linguaggio.
Traduzione di Loredana Riu
verse – verb
Versing Colombia will be tough because they are a very skilled team who dominate the ball very well.
In this event there is a lot of competition, we are versing Division I schools so it’s a good experience for me.
With apps like ESPN Scorecenter and Yahoo! Fantasy, people really only care about their own teams and players along with those they are versing.
I wouldn’t want to verse him these days – I’m worried he may beat me.
In these columns we have often looked at verbs that become nouns and nouns that start being used as verbs, occasionally even adjectives that take on the role of nouns. It’s not often that a preposition starts to be used in a different word class, but this is what has happened with the verb verse. Verse is used especially by young people to say play (against), or fight, and is seemingly derived by a process called back formation from the preposition versus, meaning ‘against’. Versus and its abbreviation vs are typically used in setting out sporting fixtures, and it is deduced that children misinterpret versus as a verb and conjugate it accordingly, knocking off the -us ending that would make it awkward to say. The verb is not just used by children, however; you can find plentiful examples in writing online and it is starting to make its way into mainstream dictionaries.
Origin
Although you won’t find the verb verse in many dictionaries except as an obsolete word meaning to write poetry, it has in fact been around for some time. In a post on Language Log in 2012, Mark Liberman traced it back to the 1980s, with some reports of it being used in the 70s. It seems to drop out of view and then re-emerge without ever being fully accepted.
