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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

Not trying to stir up controversy or detract from the interesting article, but I find the verb "to bartend" and its various tenses to be unwieldy and cumbersome. I greatly prefer to verb "to tend bar" in its stead. Am I weird?

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Or use the verb "be/am" as in "I am behind the sticks" :)

> Am I weird?

If you’re American, idk about “weird” but definitely in the very small minority. Bartend is used as naturally as any other verb by almost all native speakers, as far as I can tell.

I’m not sure about other countries.

“Tending bar” puts more emphasis on what one might argue is the more important part of the phrase. No one is there for the tender. Consider versus “woodworking”: you want the work, not the hunk of wood.

I am with you, for what it’s worth. I would be tending the bar and frowning at anyone who asked for “gin and tonics” until they corrected themselves.

Huh I have exactly the opposite prior here. I was surprised by the Ngram though:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=to+bartend%2C+...

Looks like over the past 200 years, "tend bar" was strongly preferred, but since the turn of the millennium, "bartend" has been catching up, and eventually overtook "tend bar". Similar results if you look at the infinitive or various cases, with the exception that "bartending" has been more popular than "tending bar" since the 1950s.

I mean, I find bartending no more unwieldy than woodworking. :-)

Indeed, "working wood" sounds a bit funny

if you're funny, it's generally easier to work the wood

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