Current peeve: Every time someone on a news program mentions the HP spying scandal, I get annoyed. The investigators impersonated telephone account owners to get copies of their phone records without their knowledge or permission. They are calling this "pretexting".
Pretext is not a verb! Pretext is a noun! The verb form for "pretext" would be "pretend". The miscreants "pretended" to be the account owners, or, better, "impersonated" the owners. They "employed a pretext" to acquire the information.
It is not ok by me to "verb a noun" when there is a perfectly good verb available.
"Google" is a noun, and I have used it as a verb, "to Google some topic", but the difference is that Google is a very new word, and we are creating ways to use it. The only suitable verb to use instead of "to Google" would be a modified phrase, "to search using Google".
"Pretext" is an old word. Don't mess with my old words!
And don't give me garbage about evolving language. Idiots have evolved "problematic" to the point where it is now useless.
Fowler is spinning in his grave....
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