I’ve noticed my niece do this on facebook. “Someone inbox me” which I assume to mean “Someone initiate a facebook message conversation with me”
To my 31 year old mind an inbox is well established as being a folder in an email client that serves as the first port of call for newly received unsorted emails. Thus it looks wrong to see the word ‘inbox’ used differently.
Is it common?
Urbandictionary says inbox as a verb is mostly on Facebook. Doesn’t give a date.
I’ve never heard someone say ‘inbox’ me. To be honest it sounds vaguely dirty. Most normal humans say “email me” even when they mean on facebook. In that case, they say “email me on facebook”
Quoi? An inbox is very clearly a bin on a desk into which unread memos, reports and sundry papers can be placed to await a response from the desk owner. Since when has it been used for email?
You’re thinking of an intray, surely.
Since at least 1993, since that’s when I started working at a bank and using email extensively, and it was called an “inbox” there. The metaphor was drawn directly from the original meaning you cite, as was the metaphor for “desktop,” “trash can,” “folder,” and dozens of other computer interface terms.
It’s common on Facebook because that’s what you clicked on to check your messages for a while. Apparently even Zuckerman thought it was stupid and renamed it to Messages.
I’ve never heard that one, but the one that annoys me is when people I work with - all graduate degree level educators - use “consequence” as a verb.
As in: “Have we decided how we are going to consequence this young man for (insert some sort of bad thing the kid did)?”
‘Verbing weirds language.’
Calvin and Hobbes
this one’s new to me
I think Inner Stickler was poking fun of Lobsang for complaining about the definition of ‘inbox’ expanding while (apparently) not realizing that his own electronic based definition was an expansion of its original physical reality-based definition.
I was being stubborn in a sarcastic way (or sarcastic in a stubborn way)…
The original definition of an ‘inbox’ (also called intray) is out of date.
The current definition is correct (mine)
The facebook definition is stupid.
You can verb any old word.
Verb verb verb, verb-verb’s the word!
:smack: Sorry, my sarcasmeter has been acting up lately.
Well, change the middle line to ‘the current definition is current’ and dump the rest and I’ll agree
I regret to announce that the use of “inbox me!” has spread beyond facebook. I received an email from a film extra agency which invited me “to inbox” if I was interested. It sounds snappy and hip and retarded. I deplore it.
This is so wrong. I hope you have killed the idiots responsible and displayed their heads on spikes as warning to all.
So they can example others, you mean?
Ain’t never heard it.
I’ve not heard inbox used as a verb, but it strikes me as a buzzword fad, just as “interface” was some years ago, i.e., “Let’s interface over lunch and strategize our plan.”
You’re truthing us.