Pedants' Paradise

[Pabmusic]

The verb 'to trend' has a long history.

My old OED has quotes back to 1000 AD - "Se æppel næfre thæs feorr ne trendeth, he cyth, hwanon he com", and many subsequent references from the 14th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

The OED quotations for "trend" as a noun are much more recent - 17th, 18th, 19th cent.

Not only banana-skinned, but carpet-pulled to boot.

[Flosshilde]

I missed that, Floss. It only goes to show.

Mangerton did suggest that it might be a mis-print for 'wended', but I'm not sure that I'm convinced by that idea. I'd need to check in another edition.

I've been banana-skinned! (I bet that's not in Rider Haggard ).

banana-skinned?

[amateur51]

As in "Does my ask look big in this?"

[amateur51]

If a big ask goes wrong, will it end up as the biggest ask disaster in the world?

[Pabmusic]

...banana-skinned?

Slipped up in a transitive way.

[french frank]

I think that the specific use of 'to trend' in an absolute sense is new. If a Twitter topic 'trends', doesn't that imply quantity (more than direction) as well as being found on an increasing number of Twitter pages?

It looks to me as if there was a development: to trend (vb intrans, rarely absol., mostly obsolete in the sense of turning round/revolving) > trend (noun, prevailing direction, late 1884) > trend (verb absol.).

In other words, the original sense of the verb is now obsolete; the noun appeared in the 19th c.; and the current usage is very modern. Unless it has the sense of a topic that is going round and round ('doing the rounds').

Perhaps?

[Pabmusic]

Unless it has the sense of a topic that is going round and round ('doing the rounds').

Perhaps?

Like this post?

[kernelbogey]

And of course now, thanks to Facebook, we have friend as a verb - I friended her - and its coined antithesis 'unfriended'.

[french frank]

Actually, it did just occur to me that the Twitter meaning probably derives from 'trendy' as in fashioonable, following the prevailing trend.

Irritatingly, Pabmusic thought of it first ...

Unless it has the sense of a topic that is going round and round ('doing the rounds').

Like this post?

[Pabmusic]

Irritatingly, Pabmusic thought of it first ...

I didn't think of it first. I just had this irresistible impulse to type those words. What do they mean?

[mangerton]

Y

Mangerton did suggest that it might be a mis-print for 'wended', but I'm not sure that I'm convinced by that idea. I'd need to check in another edition.

I must come clean and say that my tongue was rather in my cheek when I wrote that.

Similarly with "bended".

[Panjandrum]

As I said up-thread () I recently found 'trended' in Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (pub. c. 1895) - "the road trended to the left".

You've got yourself a duff copy there Candyfloss, old chum - perhaps a version adapted for kids? The text (from start of Ch VIII; "We Enter Kukuanaland") in the magisterial Penguin edition is: "All that afternoon we travelled on along the magnificent roadway, which headed (sic) steadily in a north-westerly direction."

[vinteuil]

You've got yourself a duff copy there Candyfloss, old chum - perhaps a version adapted for kids? The text (from start of Ch VIII; "We Enter Kukuanaland") in the magisterial Penguin edition is: "All that afternoon we travelled on along the magnificent roadway, which headed (sic) steadily in a north-westerly direction."

... hmmm. My copy has -

"All that afternoon we travelled along the magnificent roadway, which trended steadily in a north-westerly direction. Infadoos and Scragga walked with us, but their followers marched about one hundred paces ahead.

"Infadoos," I said at length, "who made this road?" .... "


And on the principle of lectio difficilior, I wd suggest it more likely that 'trended' was altered to 'headed' rather than the other way about...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_difficilior_potior

[amateur51]

You've got yourself a duff copy there Candyfloss, old chum - perhaps a version adapted for kids? The text (from start of Ch VIII; "We Enter Kukuanaland") in the magisterial Penguin edition is: "All that afternoon we travelled on along the magnificent roadway, which headed (sic) steadily in a north-westerly direction."

We've all heard of a King penguin and an Emperor penguin but ... surely not

[Flosshilde]

You've got yourself a duff copy there Candyfloss, old chum - perhaps a version adapted for kids? The text (from start of Ch VIII; "We Enter Kukuanaland") in the magisterial Penguin edition is: "All that afternoon we travelled on along the magnificent roadway, which headed (sic) steadily in a north-westerly direction."

As I borrowed it from the library (you don't think I'd buy stuff like that, do you ?) I can't check the publisher or the edition.