We have a new verb

"Giant shark monsters fishing boat"

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/9858390/giant-shark-monsters-fishing-boa...

Pink-OZ-cat, oh come on (Aussie, c'mon, c'mon).

To monster; vb
5. informal ( Austral ), ( NZ ) to criticize (a person or group) severely
6. ( Austral ), ( NZ ) sport to use intimidating tactics against (an opponent).

Wait! Are there 'larger than normal' shark monsters who are using fraudulent emails to try to gain information for identity theft from a small watercraft? That would be "Giant shark monsters phishing boat"

ah - I see that I will have to get out more. :) Not in my version of the OED, though.

It will be stored in my mind as something NOT to say, along with 'my bad'.

"verb trans. informal chiefly Brit.
criticize or reprimand severely: my mother used to monster me for coming home so late."
New Oxford American Dictionary

>3 pinkozcat: That's alright, when you guys secede you can develop your own dictionaries! re: >4 sorchah: See, even the Seppos understand it, although unusually they don't claim it as their own!

Having insulted probably about 85% of the LT membership now, I think I'll slink off and hide for a while.

Peace and love.

FWIW, Chambers has "vt (sl) to subject to bullying or harsh criticism."

...oh, and anyone who objects to monstering can counter it by staging a demonstration.

Although I confess to hating this usage with some venom, I regret to inform readers that it's hardly new, and also has an impeccable provenance:

'Shakespeare King Lear i. i. 219 Sure her offence must be of such vnnaturall degree, That monsters it.'

I am indebted to the Online OED for this!

>7 CliffordDorset:
I think that's the one the Shorter calls "E17: exhibit or point out as something remarkable" (can't check OED online from home, alas). So Shakespeare's use has more in common with French montrer than with the modern Aussie sense, which obviously comes via the English noun.

>8 thorold:
Looked it up: I was wrong.
The King Lear citation is listed by the OED as sense 1 "To make a monster of" - but there's also a line from Coriolanus for sense 2 "To exhibit as a ‘monster’".

So can I say that I monstered a Monster?

when you guys secede you can develop your own dictionaries

They have: see
http://www.librarything.com/work/21088
http://www.librarything.com/work/1836111
http://www.librarything.com/work/1830297

Ah - we are not talking about Australia as a whole here; Western Australia has been threatening to secede for about 80 years and the calls are very strong at the moment. The main sticking point is what we should call ourselves when we become an independent country. Twiggylia is one option. justjim will know ...

Perth has just been downgraded to a 'regional centre' but for economic rather than political reasons.

Here in the US, our states actually do secede. Just look at West Virginia. :)

>12 pinkozcat:
South Timor?

#13 - and North Dakota may not even be in the union.

Don't forget the Republic of Texas.

Of course, we in Western Australia already have the Hutt River Province ruled by Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley.

Perhaps we should stage a takeover and vote Twiggy Forrest for king.

In the UK, border-hugging Hay-on-Wye declared UDI* from both England and Wales some years ago. For the purposes of promoting a highly successful annual book festival, you understand. No passports needed to get in. Or out. Just the purchase of some books.

* Unilateral declaration of independence. As in that Rhodesia-thing. Very successful it was too: everybody respects Rhodesia and what it has become on the world stage.

we are not talking about Australia as a whole here; Western Australia has been threatening to secede for about 80 years

Ah, I see. (They must be bonkers. )

Threatening to secede can be a dicey game. The Slovakians threatened to secede from Czechoslovakia, and the Czechs simply laughed and said "Byeee! Shut the door behind you!", and then got on with being a western European country while the Slovakians were still trying to decide how to ensure that stamp collectors realized they were different from Slovenia.

Not at all. We have most of the mineral wealth . We would be much better off without the rest of Oz.

monster, v. rare.

(ˈmɒnstə(r))

f. monster n.

1.1 trans. To make a monster of.

1605 Shakes. Lear i. i. 223 Sure her offence Must be of such vnnaturall degree, That monsters it.

2.2 To exhibit as a monster; to point out as something wonderful.

1607 Shakes. Cor. ii. ii. 81, I had rather haue one scratch my Head i' th' Sun, When the Alarum were strucke, then idly sit To heare my Nothings monster'd. 1833 Lamb Elia Ser. ii. Productions Mod. Art, Were the ‘fine frenzies’, which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote, a fit subject‥to be monstered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of great men? 1873 E. FitzGerald Lett. (1889) I. 352 He Béranger hated Paris,‥hated being monstered himself as a Great Man, as he proved by flying from it.

3.3 to monster it: to play the monster, assume the appearance of greatness. nonce-use.

1646 Buck Rich. III Ded., They will haunte the noblest merits and endeavors to their Sun-set, then they monster it.

Hence ˈmonstered a., rendered monstrous, abnormally great. Also ˈmonsterer, one who makes great in a remarkable degree, an exaggerator. (Echoing Shakes.: see monster v. 2, 1607.)

1877 Blackie Wise Men 95 You worship your own selves, and make your gods A monstered self. 1840 Mrs. Gore in New Monthly Mag. LX. 52 The political Lady Patroness;‥the accredited monsterer of nothings inaudible in the gallery.


______________________________

Additions 1997

Add: 4.4 trans. orig. and chiefly Austral. To harass, attack, or beset; (esp. in political contexts) to criticize (a person, policy, etc.) vigorously; to defame, disparage.

1967 Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxvi. 4/2 Monster, make unwelcome passes at a girl. 1976 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 12 Feb. 5/3 Capote also has the Lady Ina monstering‥people like William S. Paley, Chairman of CBS, etc.. 1977 Ibid. 15 Dec. 4/2 Burchett‥has been monstered of late by the New York Post, which considers him a Communist menace and a bit of a double-dealer. 1983 Sydney Morning Herald 5 Mar. 13/6 He was in trouble for saying something good about the prices and incomes policy while the Prime Minister was monstering it. 1986 Auckland Metro Feb. 5 Who needs to be chased, cut in on, choked with burning rubber and exhaust fumes at the next red/green light and generally monstered to salve some easily pricked self esteem? 1993 Sun-Herald (Brisbane) 6 June 22/2 One ferocious socialite monstered him with stories about her wealth, shopping expeditions, friends in high places and suitability for a page of photos in Hello!

The above notwithstanding, I suspect that the Prince of Wales would think the verb "to monster" a monstrous carbuncle on the face of the English language.

Indeed, he would probably carbunculate it.

'Carbuncle' is an interesting word. Essentially meaning a small piece of glowing coal, in medieval times as a shining precious stone (if my memory serves me right) it lit up Grail Castles and Rabelais' Oracle of the Holy Bottle like a miniature sun, and functioned as a building block for the gates of the City of Revelation in, well, Revelations. From being a monstrous gem it somehow seemed to become an abscess, and thence a monstrous growth.

It also has a meaning in historical gemology as one of the twelve precious stones that adorned the Breastplate of Aaron, brother of Moses. In Exodus 28, 15-30 it describes the breastplate representing the tribes of Israel, each stone engraved with a tribe name. One of the top row is described as a 'carbuncle'. In Cosmic Crystals Ra Bonewitz indicates the difficulties of identifying ancient names of minerals with modern equivalents, but says that "although the evidence points to almandine garnet, there is no certainty on this point." The word may relate to 'cabachon' in this context, meaning that the stone was worked into a convex flat bottomed gem.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almandine

Back to topic, though, doesn't 'verbalise' mean, in the natural process of language development, the conversion of a noun into a verb?

>26 scintillathepun:
That's one of the three definitions in my Concise Oxford.

As Calvin* once remarked, "Verbing weirds language!".

* That's the six-year-old in the cartoon "Calvin and Hobbes", not the theologian.

Quite.
The word 'also' is missing from my 26 after 'verbalise'.

Is there a precedent for this verbalisation? It was emailed by my stockbroker this morning:

"We initiative coverage on Patties Foods with a Buy, Medium Risk rating and target price of A$1.80."

31> That sounds like a typo where they meant initiated.

Somehow, I think they were newly verbing a different noun.

Stock isn't the only thing he broke!