The Verb

The Verb: It was early in 1969, and William Morris had a language to fix. On his desk, at 72 West 45th street in New York, was a stack of ballots, letters and interview notes from 104 of America's most important users-of-words. A writer for the New Yorker had written to campaign against the use of "senior citizen." The editor of Harper's magazine was lobbying for the use of "escalate" as a verb. Isaac Asimov had emphatically expressed his deep hatred of "finalize"; David Oglivy, the father of modern advertising, said of "hopefully": "If your dictionary could kill this horror, and do nothing else, it would be worth publishing."

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