About the author

tanita s. davis is a writer and avid reader who prefers books to most things in the world, including people. That's ...pretty much it, she's very boring and she can't even tell jokes. She is, however, the author of nine books, including Serena Says, Partly Cloudy, Go Figure, Henri Weldon, and the Coretta Scott King honored Mare's War. Look for her new MG, The Science of Friendship in 1/2024 from Katherine Tegen Books.

Comments

  1. I can't use "friend" as a verb. I say "befriend" and that's all. Maybe someday I'll change my mind if friend as a verb becomes so firmly entrenched in the English language that it becomes correct useage. We'll see. Taking words and making them into other parts of speech is called a functional shift. It's fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) to study how language changes.

    By the way, I think "followers" in Edwardian times had to do with female servants having boyfriends. "No followers" was often a rule.

    No wonder that hierarchy didn't last.

  2. Interesting about the Edwardian connotation of "followers."

    I've definitely used "friend" as a verb (only for Facebook-related conversations) but it always feels vaguely wrong…as for "my bad," I'm so used to it, I guess, that it doesn't really bother me. I actually remember the first time I heard someone use it, when I was in high school, and thinking "errr?"

  3. I like Wm. Safire! I have a dream of being that articulate as well… sometimes I feel like my brain is mushy because I don't read challenging enough columnists – but I know it's just that I get tired of people not knowing what I mean when I use certain words.

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