“Tasking” can be a noun in the Army. A person may even be given several taskings at once. Where did this come from? Has this usage been around a while, or is it new? Does anyone else have to deal with taskings, or do you just handle tasks like normal people?
And don’t get me started on cache (ca-shay).
You mean cachet? Or are you referring to people who don’t know how to pronounce cache?
I have the same beef with symptomatology, incidentally.
Oh, you know… when someone finds three “ca-shays” full of weapons…
If that’s not what Ru Paul calls her home arsenal, there is no god.
So does “tasking”, as a noun, mean something different from “task”?
It’s been around for a long time. I remember it from military jargon 20 years ago, although it was used mostly as a verb: "I’m tasking you with making sure. . . "
Task is listed as a dictionary verb, and all verbs have gerunds, and all gerunds can act as nouns, and all nouns have a plural form, no matter how nonsenical they may be in practice. The internal beauty of the English language.
The potentiality that a denoted usage in the English language is grammatically and syntactically unobjectionable should not be taken as an indication that said usage is enthusiastically sanctioned by those who pass for the arbiters of the language, or indeed that it is intelligible to the unexceptional speaker.
Dictionaries “pass for the arbiter” of the language, and accept “task” as a verb, and all else follows.
“Playings” are not the same as “plays”. “Runnings” are not the same as “runs”. “Doings” are not the same as “dos”. Those forms imply important distinctions.
Is that a rule? Is it really true for all verbs, or just theoretically true? I know it is true for many verbs, but I didn’t know it was a rule for all verbs.
For instance, eat and feed, are two similar verbs.
Eats can be a noun. “Does this place have any good eats.” (Painful, I know)
Feeds cannot be a noun, because the plural of feed is still feed. “Give the chickens two more bags of feed.”
As for the gerund nouns:
Feeding and feedings are words. “I stayed at the tiger exhibit and watched three feedings yesterday.”
But eating and eatings? Are they really proper words?
All taskings are tasks, but not all tasks are taskings.
Tying your shoe is a task.
Serving on the shoe tying committee is a tasking.
If it is something you normally have to do, it is a task. When higher headquarters needs it done, it is a tasking. Taskings almost always come down in formal, written format. When a person has to fulfill a role or obligation on the tasking, he/she is said to be “tasked out”.
Soldier 1: Are you coming out to the bar with us on Saturday?
Soldier 2: No, I’m tasked out for the Congressional VIP visit on Saturday. I have to escort the press around all day.
Have you heard it since leaving the military? Does the corporate world pass down taskings? Does the regional office send taskings down to the local offices?
I’m wondering what the civilian equivalent to the word is.
Nuh, uh! You can have multiple RSS feeds, for instance. See here.
Incidentally, here is Wiktionary on “tasking” (though it just confirms what you say).
Yes. Certainly the singular is not weird. “This pork is delicious eating.” Now, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the plural in the wild, but I don’t see any reason to object to it.
Quite right! It was the eatings vs feedings that my mind started. By the time I worked backwards to eats and feeds, I forgot about the other definition of feed. Focused solely on the food aspect of the words.
I even wondered if there was something to the fact that there shouldn’t be a need for the word taskings because tasks is already a word. And I thought that had something to do with why there is no eatings since eats is a word.
But then I thought about shows and showings, so I knew that wasn’t it.
So what about eatings, though? Can you think of a sentence or instance where it can be used? Is it still considered a legitimate word because of the rule you mentioned earlier?
Thanks!
Them’s good eatin’s.
Or if you prefer more formal talkings, "“The cat and the dog both finished up their respective eatings.”
Well, according to a current thread over in Cafe Society, the eatings at Popeye’s Chicken are pretty good.
The federal government also tasks people with taskers.