Eleanor Roosevelt's son authored mysteries in which his mother solves murders | Hacker News Reader

Eleanor Roosevelt's son authored mysteries in which his mother solves murders

crimereads.com

72 pointsBerislavLopac27 comments

In WASP circles mysteries are classier than fanfic. Imagine if he'd shipped Anna Eleanor with Lyudmila Mikhailovna!

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/eleanor-roosevelt-and...

Edit: Yes, "ship" is fanfically verbed. Hate the language, not the writer. (I find it amusing that a forum which runs to multiple pages on relationships such as Oracle/TikTok or Arm/Nvidia doesn't appreciate mentions of relationships more along the lines of Twilight Sparkle/Rainbow Dash.)

Edit2: Give ship a few more years, and it may pick up some prepositions with distinct meanings. "Him? He just ships around" or "With you? Not in a thousand years! Ship off!" (but not "*I'm shipping up to Boston").

I am infuriated by the idiotic use of “authored” rather than “wrote” but in this case, as they were ghostwritten, perhaps it’s actually in some sense correct!

(Stomping off now to be pissed off at the odious use of “gift” as a verb)

Gift has been used as a verb maybe as long as it has been used as a noun. If you read some older British literature it's all over the place.

I didn’t say it might not be well attested, I said its use is odious. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/gi...

And anyway its Germanic root now means “poison”.

That article is hundreds of words to say “I subjectively dislike the word ‘gifting’, on aesthetic grounds”.

What’s the big deal? All words are, ultimately, made up.

Difference between Author and Writer http://www.differencebetween.net/business/difference-between...

Verb all the nouns! I gotta coffee then bookshelf the cup for later while keyboarding my thoughts as a part of internetting for the morning. You can brain this gifting from me to you! Thanks, I hate it too.

For verbing to truly weird language we should try using them for other parts of language like adverbs and articles!

(Stomping off now to be pissed off at the odious use of “*wert-” as an adjective)

Did you google it?

"Verbing weirds language"

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25

Verbing is super cool! English being my second language, the casualness of verbing is my favorite feature of it! In Polish, you can technically verb nouns too, but it's frowned upon to do it on your own.

Hopefully, your comment will incent headliners to avoid humbugging you.

I like the word "author" (~ authority) as the verb to describe the process of exerting control over, and taking credit for, the writing of something they didn't actually write.

The art world also needs such a verb for the artist who supervises his assistants as they do all the actual painting/sculpting/glassblowing in the master's style.

In copyright law I believe it's the same word: author. Indeed, the notion that authorship subsists in the person with creative control is typically explained by way of a hypothetical painter, photographer, or sculptor.

I think the ability to arbitrarily verbify a noun is a powerful and desirable language feature.

> I think the ability to arbitrarily verbify a noun is a powerful and desirable language feature.

Verbing weirds language.

But it weirds so well!

Its definitely possible to abuse good (or neutral) language features to produce intentionally obfuscated or unclear sentences.

The etymology of the word 'weird' here is interesting. I think its rootest-of-roots was actually a verb.

I think language just naturally allows verbification or other shifts when it 'feels' rights, and when there isn't another term that should clearly be used instead.

> The etymology of the word 'weird' here is interesting. I think its rootest-of-roots was actually a verb.

Ooooh, thank you for that rabbit hole/etymology adventure! For any others interested:

weird (adj.) c. 1400, "having power to control fate, from wierd (n.), from Old English wyrd "fate, chance, fortune; destiny; the Fates," literally "that which comes," from Proto-Germanic wurthiz (source also of Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt "fate," Old Norse urðr "fate, one of the three Norns"), from PIE wert- "to turn, to wind," (source also of German werden, Old English weorðan "to become"), from root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend." [https://www.etymonline.com/word/weird]

Adverbified languages change weirdly too.

Although you make a fair point, there are more important things to be angry about, or alternatively we may have found life on venus so go and be not-angry about that.

> Although you make a fair point, there are more important things to be angry about, or alternatively we may have found life on venus so go and be not-angry about that.

Your casual dismissal of an entirely legitimate gripe which I do not share has enraged me quite unreasonably[0]. shakes fist

As for the (currently hypothetical) venusians, the existential proof — should it be forthcoming after (if?) probes are sent — may ultimately have a greater societal impact through expansion of the synbio toolbox rather than the implications for the Drake equation and Fermi paradox.

We definitely seem to be living in interesting times. I wonder... does that make it more likely that we are living in a simulation?

[0] In an entirely abstract sense, that is.

The more intricate and symmetrical everything appears to me makes me increasingly sure(er) about the simulation.

But don't talk about it too much, their end goal of the experiment could be to discover the point at which a conscious entity realises that its world is fabricated.

big letters appear in the sky: GAME OVER CONTINUE? 3, 2, 1...

This comment you've authored seems rather emotional. The usage of the word authored is not incorrect.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/authored

Unless the Cambridge dictionary's definition is flawed?

>to write a book, article, etc.: He has authored more than 30 books.

>to create something: The deal is being authored by a Greek diplomat.

My Merriman-Webster app says it was first used as a verb in 1597. And gift was used as a verb about half a century before that! At some point old fogies complaining about the youngsters’ slang just need to let it go...

Makes sense, Orwell advised to prefer short words over long and pretentious ones, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Lan...

I feel like there should be a word for what would be pedantry if it was informed, but instead coming from a thoroughly ignorant point of view.

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