Verbing

So today I have decided to grumble about the recent encroachment of verbing. What brought this on, you ask? Well, two things, really.

Firstly, I've noticed a lot of people referring to 'inboxing' on Facebook. It usually takes the form of 'I'll inbox you the details' or 'inbox me the directions' or something like that.

But the final straw came when someone said it to me in a teleconference yesterday. Obviously, I maliciously refused to understand what he was asking me to do until he spoke properly. It went something like this:

Me: I'm half way through the analysis of that.
Dick: Can you inbox me when you're done?
Me: What, now?
Dick: Yeah, if you could inbox the results to me, that would be great.
Me: I'm sorry. This must be a bad line. That sounded a lot like gibberish.
Dick: INBOX. ME. THE. RESULTS.
Me: It's not the line is it?
Dick: Um...
Me: I'm going to tea.

He wasn't really called Dick. It was more of a job title.