I have blogged before about the thinginess of things: ie the tendency to make everything into an object. This, I suspect, is at the heart of the ever-increasing number of compound verbs.
https://wordpress.com/post/lizardyoga.wordpress.com/8766
For example, this morning I heard someone on the radio say, ‘I admire anyone who daily-blogs.’
Now, in an old-fashioned context this might seem perfectly normal, since daily, being an adverb as well as an adjective, was often used before a verb, viz: ‘He daily walked across Hampstead Heath.’ However I suspect that this recent utterance was coming from an altogether different place; from the land of the dreaded Compound Verb.
Mark reckons that reification, or thinginess, is the reason I didn’t get the ESOL job. The irony is patent: Ofsted exists, supposedly, to promote and monitor good teaching. I was told that my teaching skills were good. Ergo, no problem with Ofsted. But no – as any fule kno, Ofsted is its own little (not so little now) empire, generating its own work, its own ways of doing things. Which means that passing an Ofsted inspection is effectively a job in itself. Whereas it ought just to be about whether you are doing a good job in the first place. If you are, where’s the problem?
Reification, guys!
Incidentally, the word comes from the same root as Rebus.
Bong! In other news, I am happy to report that my poem is now in Mslexia magazine. I got my copy in the post yesterday!
https://mslexia.co.uk/current-issue/
Yay.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 