Verbs

“STOCKS TO BAILOUT YOUR PORTFOLIO”

Nouns, Verbs

I saw this on television.

Problem:
A noun appears where a verb should appear.

Explanation:
I saw “STOCKS TO BAILOUT YOUR PORTFOLIO” yesterday in a banner over a broadcast of the television program “Cashin’ In” on Fox News Channel.

The word “bailout” — optionally spelled with a hyphen between “bail” and “out” — is a noun and in the context of the TV banner means an instance of coming to the financial rescue.

The writer of the TV banner should have used the verb phrase “bail out” instead of the noun “bailout”.

The verb phrase “bail out” in the context of the TV banner means to relieve in a financial crisis.

In other words, “bailout” and “bail out” are not synonyms!

Solution:
“STOCKS TO BAIL OUT YOUR PORTFOLIO”

“… applications that denigrate network capacity …”

Verbs

I saw this on a website.

Problem:
The verb “denigrate” is inappropriate here.

Explanation:
The complete paragraph, which appeared on a page about broadband Internet service from Cricket Wireless, was “Throughput may be limited if use exceeds 5GB per month. Internet browsing does not include: hosted computer applications, continuous web camera or broadcast, automatic data feeds, machine-to-machine connections, peer to peer (P2P) connections or other applications that denigrate network capacity or functionality.”.

In other words, the writer was referring to software applications that could adversely affect the capacity or functionality of the Cricket Wireless broadband Internet network.

The verb “denigrate” means to derogatorily criticize, to defame, or to blacken. The N-I-G-R part of this verb can be traced to the Latin verb “nigrare”, which means to make black.

So “denigrate” applies to people, not to telecommunications or computer networks.

“Degrade” would be an appropriate verb to describe the act of adversely affecting network capacity or functionality.

For fun, I searched Google for “denigrate network” (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 194 matches.

What I found the most interesting about those search results was that Verizon Wireless also had a page that included “denigrate network capacity or functionality” in a discussion about its broadband Internet service.

That leads to one of three conclusions:

  1. Cricket copied Verizon.
  2. Verizon copied Cricket.
  3. Cricket and Verizon copied a third party when writing terms and conditions for wireless broadband Internet service.

No matter which of these three statements is true, their misuse of “denigrate” left a digital trail.

Solution:
“… applications that degrade network capacity …”

“Contenting with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic …”

Adjectives, Misspellings, Verbs

I saw this in a ConsumerReports.org article.

Problem:
The article writer used the wrong verb.

Explanation:
The full sentence was “Contenting with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic, for instance, can be tiring.” in a ConsumerReports.org article titled “Should you shift to a manual transmission?”.

The verb “content” means to make satisfied or content.

Substituting this definition into the sentence yields “Making satisfied with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic, for instance, can be tiring.”, which makes no sense.

I believe that the writer got confused by the second “t” in the adjective “contentious”, which means quarrelsome.

The solution comes from the fact that the adjective “contentious” relates to the verb “contend”, which ends with a “d” and means to struggle in opposition, not to the verb “content”, which ends with a “t”.

Solution:
“Contending with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic …”