1109. This week, we look at why kids and video gamers talk about "versing" someone. Then, we look at the linguistics of placeholder words like "whatchamacallit" and "thingamajig," including some fun international examples and the now-obsolete word "whiblin."
1109. This week, we look at why kids and video gamers talk about "versing" someone. Then, we look at the linguistics of placeholder words like "whatchamacallit" and "thingamajig," including some fun international examples and the now-obsolete word "whiblin."
The "thingamajig" segment was by Ursula Kania, a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Liverpool. It originally appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license.
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're going to talk about why kids say they are "versing" other teams and players, and then I have a whiblin about a thingamajig.
by Mignon Fogarty
I often get questions about why kids say they are versing other kids. For example, Ron M. remembers his sons starting to use the phrasing when they became Wrestlemania fans and says he even hears professional sportscasters say it. A listener named Jackie says her kids talk about versing other kids in soccer games, and a follower who goes by Mee_maa on Bluesky described hearing people say, “In last night’s match, tigers versed cubs.”
So when I first started getting questions about "versing" to mean "playing" years ago, I thought it might be a regionalism, like how people are more likely to say "spendy" in Oregon than in Florida; so I surveyed people on the Grammar Girl Facebook page, and what I found instead is that it's an age-related phenomenon. People say "versing" everywhere, but they're often kids. Although it's not unheard of among older people, back in 2012, my Facebook followers reported hearing it most often from elementary school kids.
The Oxford English Dictionary says this use is "chiefly U.S." but among my followers, it seemed to be especially common in Australia and New Zealand. It could just be a statistical blip because I have fewer followers in those countries than in the U.S., but Keryn from eastern Australia wrote, "'Verse' is a very common formulation here, especially among TV sports journalists. I even saw it on a billboard outside our local football stadium — Team A 'verse' Team B."
If you go to the transcript of this article at QuickAndDirtyTips.com, you can see the map I made from people's responses. See the whole international map.
There are many reports of people hearing kids say they are versing other teams in the '80s and '90s. In 1984, the New York Times included "versing" in an article about New Yorkese, defining it as "High school slang meaning to compete against another school's team, as in 'We're going to be versing the Brown Bombers next week.'"
Linguist Ben Zimmer pointed me to the oldest example I could find, which is from 1981. It appears in a comment on the Language Log website and comes from a note in the journal "American Speech" that appears to be the same kind of message I get. Someone named Charles Doyle wrote,
From more than one speaker recently I have heard /vǝrs/ used to mean ‘oppose in a contest,’ as in "The Braves versed the Dodgers last night." Presumably the verb derives from the preposition "versus." Is it new? Is it widespread? Would it be spelled "vers" or "verse"?
So way back in 1981, people were already asking why others were talking about versing other teams!
And it's not exclusive to physical sports. A listener named Bob says his sister would use it for competitions where "to play" didn't seem right, as in talking about versing other kids in the spelling bee — you wouldn't "play" someone in a spelling bee — and it also appears to have strong ties to video games.
A lot of parents who commented seemed to think that their kid made it up; and they didn't realize that it is widespread. And one possibility is that 40 plus years ago, kids did occasionally make it up by mistaking the preposition "versus" for a verb.
It's actually quite logical for kids to think that if "Sue dances with Joe" goes with "Sue is dancing with Joe," and if "Squiggly sees Aardvark" goes with "Squiggly is seeing Aardvark," that "Mrs. Smith's class versus Mr. Javier's class" leads to "Mrs. Smith's class is versing Mr. Javier's class." "Versus" sounds like a verb to them, not the preposition that it is. So it's reasonable to think that every once in a while, kids did make this mistake and used "versing" for a while until someone corrected them or they got older and realized it was wrong.
However, anecdotal evidence seems to point to "versing" spreading more widely through video games that came out in the '90s.
Ben Zimmer noted in a post to LinguistList.org that you could find comments that used "versing" to mean "playing" on gaming newsgroups back in the mid-'90s. For example, one gamer offered this advice on a Sony video games list in 1995: "When versing the black car, remember that the first is a warmup lap ..." A couple of my Facebook commenters noted that their kids started saying "versing" when they started playing Pokemon, and Pokemon was created in the '90s.
The first entry for "versing" showed up on the Urban Dictionary site in 2004, and reads "Derived from the common term 'vs.' in video games where choices are either 1 Player or 2 Player (commonly listed as 'vs.')." Martie on my Facebook page said her boys use it and "I tried to correct them, but learned it's the gaming lingo."
So my theory is that either kids were exposed to phrases like "A versus B" much more often because of video games, and they started making the verb mistake themselves more often and in groups where it got reinforced, OR that some of the games that came out in the '90s actually used "versing" as a verb. Either way, it spread, and became more accepted.
At this point, I'd say that "versing" still falls into the category of slang. To me, it seems similar to "woot" or "pwned" which also have roots in gaming. Older people might not have heard these before, but most kids know what it means. It has a place in niches like gaming and maybe even sports in some regions, but it would seem wrong to most people who saw it in USA Today or on CNN.
Next, I'll finish with a few fun extras.
First, "versing" actually was a verb about poetry before kids started using it this way. The Oxford English Dictionary has it being used as far back as Old English to mean "to compose or make verses." My favorite example is a sentence from 1856: "He began to verse extemporaneously in her ear."
Second, "versing" isn't the only gaming term that has made its way into real life. Two people reported that their kids say "pause" or "pause game" when they need a break when they're playing outside.
Finally, I'll leave you with this joke from Janice C. She asked, "[If kids say 'versing' to mean playing another team], if they play them again, are they reversing?"
This next segment is by Ursula Kania from the University of Liverpool.
by Ursula Kania
Over 50,000 years ago, humans started speaking and we’ve not shut up since. Sometimes, though, we struggle to remember the name of an object, a place, or a person we want to talk about. The technical term for this phenomenon is “lethologica.”
While severe word-finding difficulties can be due to serious neurological issues, such as a stroke or dementia, drawing the occasional, temporary blank is very common. Unsurprisingly, stress doesn’t help, and it gets worse as we age.
But what can we do if we’re coming up empty yet still want to keep the conversation going?
Well, there are different ways of dealing with this problem. We can hesitate, using so-called fillers like “ehm” and “uh” to buy us some time, in the hope that the right word will make a delayed but triumphant appearance.
We can describe what we mean, hoping to still get the message across. (Recently, it took me a moment to figure out that the “flat things that look like doughnuts” my daughter was talking about were DVDs.)
We may even be able to recall certain formal characteristics of the word, like the first letter or sound, or how many syllables it has and generously offer these clues to the puzzled listener: “You know – this guy we met last week, I think his name starts with a G.”
This is why we also call this the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. We’ve almost got it, and our brain is doing its best to use all stored bits of information (for example, on the word’s pronunciation and meaning) to come up with something useful to say, even if it isn’t the correct word itself.
Sometimes, this results in us making up words on the spot (referred to within linguistics as “spontaneous” or “ad-hoc coinages”). You may not find them in the dictionary, but they usually still make sense in context.
Even young children already come up with them in an attempt to put into useful practice what they’ve already learned about language – like the six-year-old referring to a women’s shampoo bottle as a “lady thing” in a study on language play.
My favourite example in this category, though, is a Tweet about a German customer in a Welsh pub who couldn’t recall the word “cutlery” and politely asked for “food weapons.”
Last but certainly not least, we may use ready-made placeholders like “thingamajig,” “whatchamacallit” (for an object) or “what’s-his-name” (for a person).
Apparently, the struggle to find the right word is real and has been for some time, because the Oxford English Dictionary has its own category for these terms, labelled “thing or person whose name is forgotten or unknown.” It includes 64 entries and some records go back as far as the early middle English period (1100–1300).
Not all of them are still used today. The last attested use for the strangely evocative “whiblin” was in 1652, for example, and “jiggumbob” is marked as obsolete.
Others, like “gizmo” or “doodah” are still going strong, though, and you can even buy “Whatchamacallits” and “Whozeewhatzits” – they are chocolate bars made by Hershey’s.
There are threads on Reddit dedicated to collecting placeholder words in English and from around the world. They are worth exploring, with gems like “doomaflitchie,” the Dutch “huppeldepup” and the German “dingsdabumsda.”
Next time you’re using “whatchamacallit,” appreciate it as your brain doing its best.
By the way: do you still remember the technical term for failing to recall the right word I introduced at the start of this article?
Yes? Congratulations!
No? Well, you and your brain know how to handle this.
That segment was by Ursula Kania, a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Liverpool. It originally appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license.
Finally, I have a familect story from Chris from the Amateur Traveler Podcast.
Hey, Mignon, it's Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. When you talked about familects, I was reminded of a story from college where one of my roommates was relaying a story of how he was walking through New York City at night. And there was this tall statuesque woman who was walking down the street, and she had a cape on, and she was singing, and he was thinking, “Well, she's not going to get mugged because she's a character.” And one of my other roommates had this very quizzical look on his face. And he said suddenly, "Oh, I thought you meant a chicken." Well, his father had been in the grocery business, and to him the word "cape on" got translated as "chicken." And so now that group of friends, if we're ever walking through a dark street at night, might yell out, "I've got a chicken!"
Thanks, Chris. I confess to subscribing to this theory: When I occasionally had to walk by myself at night in college, I would absolutely behave erratically hoping it would make would-be attackers think twice. Maybe carrying a chicken would work too!
If you want to share the story of your familect, a word or phrase that you only use with your friends or family, leave a message on the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL or leave a voice message on WhatsApp. Be sure to call from a nice, quiet place, and if you want that number or link later, you can always find them in the show notes.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Dan Feierabend in audio; Morgan Christianson in advertising; Nat Hoopes in Marketing; and Holly Hutchings, director of podcasts who learned the "Country Girl Stomp" line dance last week.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip a day book, "The Grammar Daily." That's all. Thanks for listening.