I work for a company that manufactures consumer appliances. Recently we were told in an employee app that weekend overtime was scheduled because the company was “flooring new products.” I assume this was supposed to mean putting stuff on the sales floor but none of the online dictionaries I consulted recognize that usage. Is this a legitimate meaning that hasn’t made the dictionaries yet or just another example of corporate semi-literacy?
Sounds like just another instance of businessspeak to me.
Yes, an email from an idiot.
But I’d suggest making sure your resume is up-to-date – companies run by such idiots often don’t survive.
Anyone who verbs nouns is idioting themselves.
Verbing nouns (and nouning verbs) is a long established practice in English. It goes back probably as far as the language itself does. At least modern English, but I wouldn’t be surprised if earlier versions of the language did it too.
As far as being in the dictionary: those don’t have every meaning of every word in use. They’re always behind, struggling mightily to keep up with the changes in the language. And always miss a lot of definitions in use only among subgroups of people. For example, I know of two different verb meanings of the word “taco”, and I don’t expect either to make it into general purpose dictionaries.
If it was a retail context, my assumption on hearing ‘flooring’ would be that they were spending the weekend bumping out old display stock at their shop(s), and putting in new goods. If its a place that has demonstration cook-tops and kitchens that need to be connected to plumbing and so on, that sort of stuff it can be messy.
Otherwise its lazy English and they should be fired / redeployed / de-tasked / sent on indefinite gardening leave.
Disagree strongly on this. Verbing nouns is a way of communicating something that would otherwise take a phrase or even a whole sentence to convey. Since it’s not confusing anyone, it’s actually a good thing to do, especially if you need to communicate that concept frequently.
My guess is that flooring is used in the “flooring the gas pedal” context.
Agree in principle, and happy when I hear teams ‘versing’ each other for example.
OP’s issue seems to be its ambiguity, and verbing should be adding clarity rather than losing it.
Perhaps I was too harsh in calling for sacking - just demotion and fined 6 weks pay?
The OP understood the meaning perfectly.[sup]1[/sup] The only confusion was because the definition wasn’t in dictionaries. I explained above why these kinds of meanings often aren’t.
[sup]1[/sup] The meanings of verbed nouns (and vice versa) are virtually always rather obvious, if not to everyone, at least to those people within a specific subgroup where the usage occurs.
Used car dealers will “floor” vehicles by asking to borrow money against the vehicle which they will repay when the car sells. The list of vehicles that they have outstanding loans against is their “floor plan”. But that’s not how it’s being used here.
I thought this was going to be some highly abstracted tech-speak, but this use is fairly standard sales and marketing talk. That one doesn’t see it in a dictionary is not too surprising, given the speed at which new words can take on new, related meanings. Maybe you’d like the job to pour over the dictionary and look for words that you know are used in ways not already described?
Yes; douchebags have been speaking English as long as the rest of us.
Of course verbing isn’t new. While the practice may be legitimate, it seems to me that corporate dilettantes are heavily overrepresented among verbers.
Verbing isn’t always bad, and sometimes it’s very convenient for just the reasons you mention. But verbing is often just a banal way to highfalute.
using the word Flooring as described in the OP is not lazy English or corporate speak, it’s just a case of industry specific jargon
every industry has words and phrases that mean one thing within that industry but would mean something totally different to any outsider
as far as verbing nouns, verbing is in itself an example of this
What other single word-verb would communicate this idea? The OP understands it to mean put stuff on the sales floor. If you have to use that clumsy phrase over and over again when instead there is a simple, single word that conveys the idea to all those involved, this is not “business speak,” but natural usage that happens in many communities of practice.
To use the term “verbing a noun” presumes that all words intrinsically exist as specific parts of speech, (as though God declared that word X could only be noun, or something), and there is no basis for this. The relatively limited morphology of English means that syntax plays a large part in determining the grammatical function of words, and English speakers take advantage of that.
I get that people at times devise unnatural expressions unnecessarily (e.g., “business speak”), but this case doesn’t seem like that to me. It’s natural and more efficient than the alternative (put [stuff] on the sales floor).
This is how many, many new meanings come about, and they often become generally accepted. If we can use bike, elbow, text, or friend as verbs, why not floor?
(in other words, what dtilque said.)
You’ve just given one, though I suspect you meant “pore”.
Hey, what you said was pretty good, too. I especially liked the recent examples of text and friend as verbs. They certainly were’t verbs when I grew up, but they should make it into dictionaries if they haven’t already.
ETA: I just checked M-W’s site and they already have them.
If we are complaining about annoying instances of turning nouns into verbs (is that ‘verbing’) I nominate ‘medal’ as used in major sporting events like the Olympics.
“they medalled in all the relay events”
“Returning to the non-medalling also-rans, the picture becomes even more confused.”
Plate or Plating is another one. “I want you to plate this and send it to the table.”