# Am I the only one who finds the verb "tweeted" to be highly annoying? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 16, 2011, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962 "2011-03-16T20:41:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/41 "2011-03-17T16:57:49Z")
geneb, did you miss yahoo’s expensive ad campaign where they would ask, “Do you Yahoo?!” ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/42 "2011-03-17T17:11:31Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > That has always been the verb used, ever since the start of Twitter. I remember listening to a podcast back in the middle of 2006 when it was just getting started and one of the guys on the podcast getting made fun of for tweeting. Not so. In the early days when there were only a few hundred thousand users the term was _twittered_. See [here](http://www.newsweek.com/2007/04/29/twitter-is-brevity-the-next-big-thing.html), for example. I’m pretty sure _tweet_ was introduced and/or popularized by Twitter itself, though. ---
**Author:** ![geneb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e4f/32.png) [@geneb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/geneb)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/43 "2011-03-17T19:57:30Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > geneb, did you miss yahoo’s expensive ad campaign where they would ask, “Do you Yahoo?!” Probably.. I haven’t had a TV in a very long time. I wouldn’t like that either. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/44 "2011-03-17T20:02:09Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Pbbbbth. New words get invented as people invent shit. > > You posted this to an Internet message board. Half of the words in that sentence were unknown thirty years ago. Really. Which ones? I just checked my 1960 Webster’s and the only not there was “Internet.” ---
**Author:** ![SecondJudith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@SecondJudith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecondJudith)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/45 "2011-03-18T10:48:21Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > “A Japanese family was relieved to discover via the social networking site Twitter (or just “via Twitter”) that their relatives were unharmed” or whatever. Ha! Try arguing with your news editor to fit that into your lead paragraph. Good joke. I agree with **aceplace57** that it’s a concise and immediately evocative way to convey the context of the message and its intended audience. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/46 "2011-03-18T11:13:48Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Not so. In the early days when there were only a few hundred thousand users the term was _twittered_. See [here](http://www.newsweek.com/2007/04/29/twitter-is-brevity-the-next-big-thing.html), for example. > > I’m pretty sure _tweet_ was introduced and/or popularized by Twitter itself, though. Was is twittered? You’re right, now that I think about it. There’s no way I could find the podcast at this point. Besides, considering the guys doing the podcast, there was a lot of abuse about the guy on Twitter being a twit and twittering about how he was going to the bathroom and stuff like that. ---
**Author:** ![sandra\_nz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/47 "2011-03-18T11:24:32Z")
Does it bother you when someone ‘pits’ another user on this message board? ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/48 "2011-03-18T11:25:24Z")
I figure that it’s because people are A-Twitter about something (excitedly chattering back and forth, in the manner of a bunch of startled birds), and each individual message is thus a tweet. I don’t use the service, but then again, I’m always Facebooking, so whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Anticounterrevolutionary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f04885/32.png) [@Anticounterrevolutionary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anticounterrevolutionary)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/49 "2011-03-19T01:09:17Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > “A Japanese family was relieved to discover via the social networking site Twitter (or just “via Twitter”) that their relatives were unharmed” or whatever. > [@twickster](#): > > Yeah, that’s gonna catch on. > [@SecondJudith](#): > > Ha! Try arguing with your news editor to fit that into your lead paragraph. Good joke. [The New York Times bans use of word ‘tweet’](http://articles.cnn.com/2010-06-11/tech/new.york.times.tweet_1_word-tweet-micro-blogging-site-twitter?_s=PM:TECH) I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet, the story is about a year old. So yeah, if you write for the Times your editor will insist that you use “via Twitter” rather than “tweeted”. ---
**Author:** ![Agnostic\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Agnostic\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agnostic_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/50 "2011-03-19T12:01:41Z")
Yes. I do. I refuse to use that service, though I have seen it put to good use on news sites like Al Jazeera that have a live feed next to their stories. But my personal pet peeve is that this era will go down is history as the age of Facebook, Twitter and Google. I hate the whole trend of meaningless or idiotic names. Accenture, Enron, Altria, and the rest. Bah! Get off of my lawn!!! And if I ever meet the persons that came up with ‘Snooki’, I refuse to be held liable for any acts I might commit. But it may likely involve a tattoo artist. (cf. Luke from [Freak Angels](http://www.freakangels.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/51 "2011-03-21T22:43:46Z")
I’ve always found this recent usage of _tweet_ interesting, since I would have expected people to simply use “twitter” as the verb. It suggests that some sort of umlauting process is at work, and umlauting is a very old mechanism in Germanic languages for modifications of tense, number, or part-of-speech. An example would be _tooth_, with plural _teeth_ and the verb _to teethe_ (to grow teeth). Or for another example, _song_ and _sing_. English doesn’t have a whole lot of these examples compared with, say, German or Icelandic. So if this really is where we get _twitter/tweet_, it’s an interesting holdover from an earlier period of the history of the language. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-finds-the-verb-tweeted-to-be-highly-annoying/574962/52 "2011-03-21T22:49:07Z")
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