NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David C
Date: 2018 Nov 24, 13:05 -0800
Bob wrote
OR...it is the 21st century and we don't use "hack" as a verb. One might better say, "I synchronized my stopwatch with WWV."
Thank you for your thoughts.
Language changes. As a grumpy old man I get frustrated by the addition of "up" to verbs. For example saying "park up the car" instead of just "park the car". Do not get me started on the increasing use in NZ of the Americanism "train station" instead of "railway station".......................
To get back on topic - these days just about any noun can be used as a verb. Take for example "summit". Was Mallory the first to summit Everest? I do not know.
To me the verb "to hack" means to write a quick and dirty computer program to achieve a result (a goodie). In the 21st century a hacker (noun) is someone who tries to break into the White House computer system (a baddie).
Another example of word change is demonstrated by the entertainers Frank Crumit and Peter Dawson. From the former we have "The Gay Cablllero" and from the latter "The Bachelor Gay". If you quote these titles to anyone younger than a Baby Boomer certain assumptions would probably be made about the content of the songs. Those assumptions would be wrong! Even worse, Australian school children giggle when asked to sing the famous song "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree".
Both the gentleman mentioned above have brilliant diction and timing. IMHO they put most modern singers to shame. I heartily recommend "The Gay Cablllero" for its horrible (but very enjoyable) rhymes.
