# Guilt [transitive verb]



## cuchuflete

In a private message (which I cannot quote, out of respect for privacy and forum rules) a fellow forum member used the word _guilt_ as a transitive verb.  I'll invent a similar use to illustrate:  _I don't want to guilt you fellows about this dire matter, but....

_This was the first time that I had ever seen guilt used as a verb.  I went to the stack of
cyber and paper dictionaries, and found this:



> *Guilt  *tr.v.    *guilt·ed*, *guilt·ing*, *guilts*
> To make or try to make (someone) feel guilty.
> 
> [Middle English gilt, from Old English gylt, _crime_.]                               The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition



OK.  I'm guilted.  I thought my fellow member had come up with a strained, awkward neologism when, in fact, the word seems to exist.  I'm guilted but not cowed.  It still seems awkward and odd, if not downright ugly.  But I'll be open-minded, if only a small crack...

Question: Is this transitive verb use of guilt known to you?  Is is rare, frequent, peculiar to any particular age group or occupation?  If you answer, please mention which variety of English you use.


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## Welshie

I have never heard this and I would never say it. On the other hand, "to guilt-trip someone" is common language for me.


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## sdgraham

I've never heard it that way, either. Don't guilt yourself.

Was the sender of the referenced missive a native English speaker?


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## lrosa

I have never heard it used like this but have certainly heard of "guilting people *into *doing things"


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## TropicalMontana

Sure, I have heard this before, but usually as part of a set phrase "guilting (someone) into doing (something)"  meaning making someone feel bad for trying to refuse to do something.

_I really didn't want to spend my day serving meals at the soup kitchen, but my mother guilted me into it by reminding me how I had never gone without a meal in my life._


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## entangledbank

The _OED_'s quotations are in the meaning "be guilty", stop at 1553 ("make [oneself] guilty"), then start again at 1971 in the new sense "make someone else feel guilty", so it was a neologism, not a continuation.

I should add I've never heard of the verb myself.


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## cuchuflete

sdgraham said:


> I've never heard it that way, either. Don't guilt yourself.
> 
> Was the sender of the referenced missive a native English speaker?



The writer is a native AE speaker who has a fine command of the language.

The dictionary I quoted is the only AE or BE reference I have found so far with
guilt defined as a verb.  It is listed only as a noun in the Random House Unabridged,
Merriam-Webster Online, Compact OED, OALD, and a few others I checked.


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## sound shift

I had not previously seen "guilt" used as a transitive verb.


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## xqby

The Corpus of Contemporary American English shows three hits for "guilt me" and two for "guilt him."
It's probably fair to say that guilt as a verb is rare, but I don't find the construction particularly odd.


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## lrosa

Oxford Dictionary of English 2e, Oxford University Press, 2003

*guilt*

verb [with obj.] _informal_ short for *guilt-trip*:
*Celeste had been guilted into going by her parents.


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## cuchuflete

xqby said:


> It's probably fair to say that guilt as a verb is rare, but I don't find the construction particularly odd.


  Thanks.  I do find it odd, if only because it is so unfamiliar.
I hope you won't remorse me for that.


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## Alxmrphi

It's common where I'm from, though a much more common version is a phrasal verb "to guilt trip someone" [to send/put someone on a guilt trip], which is connected to the relevant noun "a guilt trip".
_ He moaned about how he was only back for a few days and eventually *guilt tripped his friends* into going to the party._
Here 'guilt' wouldn't work by itself, but "_I'll guilt my friends into coming with me_" isn't unheard of here, though I know and knew, and fully expect 95% of the rest of the English speaking world have never heard of it and would find it odd, it doesn't stop it existing and being used.

It is worth noting that "_To guilt <someone> into.._" is extremely common, and amazingly standard.

I think cuchu is perfectly aware of this and he noticed it was used without "*into + continuous form of verb*" and that's what his question is about.


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## Nunty

I am very, very familiar with transitive guilt. At first I thought it was just my brother and me:
_It's not my turn, so don't even try guilting me into it.
Yeah, I know. I didn't want to go to the mall with her, but Ima guilted me into it.

_Later on, I heard it here and there. It always means "try to make someone feel guilty" or "lay a guilt trip on someone".

The usage does not strike me as at all unusual or even (sorry) worthy of comment. Completely within my everyday active and passive AE vocabulary.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

Cuchu, I also have never seen "guilt" used as a transitive verb, and I agree with your description of the usage as "awkward and odd, if not downright ugly."

I hope this does not ignorance or intolerance me...


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## panjandrum

I've heard it from WMPG (9-year-old girl).
The meaning was clear and in the context of the rest of her vocabulary it didn't strike me as odd.
Typically in the form of "Don't try to guilt me ..."


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## lrosa

Alxmrphi said:


> _He moaned about how he was only back for a few days and eventually *guilt tripped his friends* into going to the party._
> Here 'guilt' wouldn't work by itself



I believe you could say "He moaned about how he was only back for a few days and eventually guilted his friends into going to the party."

Like Nunty, I see nothing unusual at all about "guilt into". 5,610 of the 6,830 Google results for "guilted me" contain the word "into" after "guilted me".


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## Alxmrphi

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> Cuchu, I also have never seen "guilt" used as a transitive verb, and I agree with your description of the usage as "awkward and odd, if not downright ugly."
> 
> I hope this does not ignorance or intolerance me...



Just confirming...

"He cried and eventually guilted her into going out with him again" is unusual to you?


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## Nunty

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> Cuchu, I also have never seen "guilt" used as a transitive verb, and I agree with your description of the usage as "awkward and odd, if not downright ugly."
> 
> I hope this does not ignorance or intolerance me...



Try as you may, Messrs Cuchu and GWB, you cannot guilt me into finding this usage strange.


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## Rover_KE

This use of 'guilt' as a transitive verb is new to me, and sounds stylistically inelegant.

In almost all the examples above, I would prefer to use 'shame/shamed'.

Rover


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## Alxmrphi

Rover_KE said:


> I would prefer to use 'shame/shamed'.



But this is a different meaning.



> _tr.v._, shamed, sham·ing, shames.
> 
> To cause to feel shame; put to shame.
> To bring dishonor or disgrace on.
> To disgrace by surpassing.
> To force by making ashamed: _He was shamed into making an apology._


It fits none of those definitions, though I can see the cross-over, if someone hasn't done anything wrong then they can't be shamed [by their actions] but they can be forced to do something out of guilt / pity.

Having a friend that is upset so you would feel guilty by *not doing* what he asks, is very different from him "_shaming_" his friends into doing something.
Though if someone did do something for which they should be shamed, then playing on that would indeed be guilting them into doing something (shaming them into doing something)

In the first example quoted by cuchu, there is no nuance of making someone feel shame, but rather not wanting them to feel guilty about something.


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## entangledbank

Turning 'guilt' or 'guilt-trip' into a verb is a perfectly normal example of the _kind_ of thing English does - I'm not at all surprised by the form, and the meaning is obvious, and it's no uglier than any other word, and I'm not surprised it exists in (say) California - but _I'd_ never heard of it at all till now.


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## Nunty

entangledbank said:


> Turning 'guilt' or 'guilt-trip' into a verb is a perfectly normal example of the _kind_ of thing English does - I'm not at all surprised by the form, and the meaning is obvious, and it's no uglier than any other word, and I'm not surprised it exists in (say) California - but _I'd_ never heard of it at all till now.



Good point.

My experience with transitive guilting is from California, as it happens.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

Alxmrphi said:


> Just confirming...
> 
> "He cried and eventually guilted her into going out with him again" is unusual to you?


 
It is more than "unusual"; I have never heard it used before in my life.


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## bibliolept

Some Google searches, e.g. "_guilt him" -"guilt him into"_, return a few uses of this phrase in the manner described. At best, perhaps this phrasing should be limited to informal contexts—until it becomes more widely recognized.

A search for _guilt him about_ seems to show that "guilt someone about" is also seeing some use.


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## cuchuflete

Alxmrphi said:


> It is worth noting that "_To guilt <someone> into.._" is extremely common, and amazingly standard.
> 
> I think cuchu is perfectly aware of this and he noticed it was used without "*into + continuous form of verb*" and that's what his question is about.



It is worth noting, and confirming by reading this thread, that for a majority of the members participating here, and a huge majority of those over say the age of thirty,
this is either totally unknown or considered quite rare.  

I am perfectly unaware of any verbal use, transitive or otherwise, of the the word guilt.
As mentioned in the first post, today was my first unhappy exposure to it, though it seems I will be hearing it again, as I have family in California.  

The precise usage I enjoyed  so much little did not include either _into  _or any _continuous form of verb.  _Alex gives me credit where none is due.  (But I suspect he knew that, and was trying to guilt-trip me or trip me up otherwise.   )


I've looked at the PM, and believe I can quote a few words while maintaining the confidentiality of the message:
 			 			Not to guilt anyone over this, but  _subject +past tense verb....

_​Just pretend the topic was cleaning the kitchen after dinner, or putting dents in your father's car.  It's that introductory disclaimer that contained my first exposure to this bit of modern linguistic clunkiness.  I won't lose sleep over being an old codger who isn't up to date with the latest subtleties of the language.  It's interesting to learn about it, if only to choose different words.


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## Alxmrphi

> Alex gives me credit where none is due.  (But I suspect he knew that, and was trying to guilt-trip me or trip me up otherwise.   )


Hahah, Would I? 

I am just as shocked, but from the opposite side, as I see_ (and know by some PM's I've received)_ that other people are surprised, either equally or more surprised to find out that a lot of people here aren't used to it. It's like taking language I was so used to thinking as a solid, normal, average historical verb and saying it was invented last week!
I don't usually say this, but I'm 100% with Nunty on this one 



> It is worth noting, and confirming by reading this thread, that for a majority of the members participating here, and a huge majority of those over say the age of thirty,
> this is either totally unknown or considered quite rare.



I wonder what ewie's take is on this, as we usually find ourselves speaking in a similar way (due to proximity), and he's over 30...


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## bibliolept

There are a handful of hits for "guilt him over," "guilt her over," "guilted them over," etc. We've apparently caught the phrase in its incipient/incubation/larval stage.


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## Old Novice

cuchuflete said:


> It is worth noting, and confirming by reading this thread, that for a majority of the members participating here, and a huge majority of those over say the age of thirty,
> this is either totally unknown or considered quite rare.


 
Sorry to be late to the party, but I'm from Massachusetts, not California, and my kids (ages 24-34) have been using "guilt" in this way for quite some time. Until now, I thought it was another recent example of what Calvin (of _Calvin and Hobbes_) refers to as "verbing nouns." It's actually reassuring to me to learn that the usage is not as recent as I'd thought!


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## ewie

Alxmrphi said:


> I wonder what ewie's take is on this, as we usually find ourselves speaking in a similar way (due to proximity), and he's over 30...


It's a new one for me too.  It's entirely possible I _have_ heard it ... but I tend to switch off when people start talking Californianese
It doesn't strike me as much clunkier than a lot of _other_ clunky stuff.


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## Alxmrphi

ewie said:


> It's a new one for me too.  It's entirely possible I _have_ heard it ... but I tend to switch off when people start talking Californianese
> It doesn't strike me as much clunkier than a lot of _other_ clunky stuff.



Hmmm, ok it must be a generational thing then, why do you say it's Californian though?


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## ewie

Oh it just sounds kind-of-Californian to me, Alex, you know, like in "How many Californians does it take to change a lightbulb? ~ 27: 1 to change the lightbulb and 26 to share the experience" kind of thing.

Come to think of it, it has a bit of a hippy ring to it: _Okay so it's weed ~ just don't guilt me out, man_.  Hippies were invented in California, I believe, shortly after I was born.


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## Alxmrphi

How do you express the concept? I did write a list of options and kinda repeated myself a bit, it's just easier if I ask you what you say so I can see how it's expressed by _the_ _old timers_ [You know I'm only joking ]


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## Cagey

As speakers of British English are inclined to ascribe anything that sounds odd to them to American English, so do speakers of American English ascribe usages they don't like, really, to Californians.

Just sayin'.***

Not that I want to _make you feel guilty or_ anything.  (That's how we old timers would say it, Alex.)

Note, by the way, that this Californian doesn't claim this usage, while Old Novice from Old Mass tells us that his adult children use it. 

[** *Approximately = "I am just saying this, not trying to make a point."]


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## C. E. Whitehead

Hmm



lrosa said:


> I have never heard it used like this but have certainly heard of "guilting people *into *doing things"


 

Maybe, "goading people into doing things"???

Best,

cew


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## C. E. Whitehead

Hi, I'm not that old a timer; I am somewhat older maybe.



Alxmrphi said:


> How do you express the concept? I did write a list of options and kinda repeated myself a bit, it's just easier if I ask you what you say so I can see how it's expressed by _the_ _old timers_ [You know I'm only joking ]


 
"Don't make me feel guity" is fine.

Also more hip people used to say,
"Don't lay a guilt trip on me."  (this is definitely slang though).

You can "give someone a guilt trip" (a bit more standard than "lay a guilt trip on someone").

I am used to the expression "guilt trip," but as I start to think about it, can see it's connection to the so-called 'trip's experienced by users of hallucinogenic drugs, so am not sure what to think about it now.  
In any case, hallucinogenic drug trips are definitely not good (in my opinion at least) and in fact "guilt trip" has negative connotations here.

"Making someone feel guilty" is not as negative as "laying a guilt trip on someone."  But most people don't like being made to feel guilty, not at all.  (Some years back, there was a Doonesbury cartoon about a couple shopping for a religion that did not make them feel guilty.)

Best,

cew


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## Redshade

This middle aged UK resident has never heard this word used in this way at all.

I'm not saying it's wrong mind.


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## Wilma_Sweden

This came to no great surprise to me, I can vaguely remember hearing it on some TV show. Unfortunately I can't remember if it was American or British, neither in what context. However, Longman's Dictionary also includes it, particularly in the context of guilting someone into something/into doing something. There are no examples of it in the British National Corpus, though. 

On the whole, it doesn't strike me as any more odd than all the other English nouns made into verbs(*). I guess the new ones just take some getting used to... 

(*) e.g. to father a child, which strikes me as equally odd, but it's been around since the era of the Tudors...


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## Gwan

C. E. Whitehead said:


> Hmm
> Maybe, "goading people into doing things"???
> 
> Best,
> 
> cew



'Goading' and 'guilting' are different in my book. For example, if I was one of those wankers for which this is an all-purpose excuse for domestic violence, you could goad me into punching you in the face, but you probably wouldn't guilt me into it.


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## Nunty

I would just like to thank everyone for putting this middle-aged woman on the side of the under-30s! 

I am still surprised that people find this surprising...


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## GreenWhiteBlue

Wilma_Sweden said:


> However, Longman's Dictionary also includes it,


 
Quelle surprise...


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## ewie

Alxmrphi said:


> how it's expressed by _the_ _old timers_


I strongly suspect, Alex, that like another notorious old timer _[post #19]_, I would use the verb _shame_.  As far as I'm concerned, _shame _[= vtr] means virtually the same thing as _make someone feel guilty about_


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## Pedro y La Torre

I'm 21 and have never heard such usage. I would instinctively regard it as being wrong.


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## lrosa

Pedro y La Torre said:


> I'm 21 and have never heard such usage. I would instinctively regard it as being wrong.



Are you serious? Is there nothing I can say that will guilt you into changing your mind?


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## C. E. Whitehead

Hi!



Rover_KE said:


> This use of 'guilt' as a transitive verb is new to me, and sounds stylistically inelegant.
> 
> In almost all the examples above, I would prefer to use 'shame/shamed'.
> 
> Rover


 
I agree!


--cew


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## C. E. Whitehead

Yes these are different but my point was that 'goading;' works better in that sentence grammatically than 'guilting' because for me 'guilt' is not a verb!
--cew



Gwan said:


> 'Goading' and 'guilting' are different in my book. For example, if I was one of those wankers for which this is an all-purpose excuse for domestic violence, you could goad me into punching you in the face, but you probably wouldn't guilt me into it.


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## bibliolept

I'm surprised that no one objects to the idea that guilt and shame may not be exactly synonymous, at least not it all contexts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame#Shame_vs._guilt_and_embarrassment. That discussion, is probably beyond this thread and maybe even this forum's scope.

That said, I think that you will find many younger Americans who are at least familiar with "guilt into." I only find the other uses of guilt as a verb to be somewhat less familiar or idiomatic.


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## JamesM

I like to check books.google.com to find the earliest example of something, just as a game more than anything.

I found a 1990 book with "You wouldn't be trying to guilt me into this?" It may be a fairly new "verbing" of the noun, but it's not freshly coined if it's been in print for nearly twenty years.


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## C. E. Whitehead

Hi!



Alxmrphi said:


> Having a friend that is upset so you would feel guilty by *not doing* what he asks, is very different from him "_shaming_" his friends into doing something.


 
Absolutely! Good point! I missed this!  In my ancient, antiquated, and near moribund vocabulary then, the only way to talk about  someone['s] making me feel guilty is to use, "make[s] me feel guilty."

Sorry.

But here the verb "guilt" is at google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=guilt+me&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g7g%3As1

--cew


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## cuchuflete

C. E. Whitehead said:


> But here the verb "guilt" is at google:
> 
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=guilt+me&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g7g:s1



That google search, for _guilt me_ shows some 47 million projected web pages. It is very misleading.  Put  ❝❞ around the words to find them together on a page, and things change substantially.  There are 832 actual web pages, some repeating text from others, and a projection of some 32 thousand pages.

 Results *831* - *832* of about *31,800* for *"guilt me"*.  

Certainly the verb exists, is used, appalls some while it seems routine to others, but it is not nearly so widespread as the earlier google link might suggest.


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## lrosa

A couple of people raised the possibility of replacing the verb "guilt" with the verb "shame". Now, how is it any stranger or "clunkier" to use "guilt" as a verb than to use "shame" as one?


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## Loob

lrosa said:


> how is it any stranger or "clunkier" to use "guilt" as a verb than to use "shame" as one?


It's just that _shame_ as a verb has been around a lot longer, Irosa. The OED's first citation is from Beowulf, whereas the first citation for the 'revived' verb _guilt _is from 1971.


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## entangledbank

cuchuflete said:


> There are 832 actual web pages, some repeating text from others, and a projection of some 32 thousand pages.
> 
> Results *831* - *832* of about *31,800* for *"guilt me"*.
> 
> Certainly the verb exists, is used, appalls some while it seems routine to others, but it is not nearly so widespread as the earlier google link might suggest.


 
Be aware that Google never _actually_ supplies even a thousand hits for anything. The bare word 'guilt' stops at 881 out of 20 500 000 hits.


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## lrosa

Loob said:


> It's just that _shame_ as a verb has been around a lot longer, Irosa. The OED's first citation is from Beowulf, whereas the first citation for the 'revived' verb _guilt _is from 1971.



I was pondering whether to acknowledge this in my post, but I should have known that it would of course be used against me . Still, in my eyes, there is very little stylistic (or otherwise) difference between using what is for the majority of the time a noun ("shame") as a verb, and using "guilt" in the same way.


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## Old Novice

lrosa said:


> I was pondering whether to acknowledge this in my post, but I should have known that it would of course be used against me . Still, in my eyes, there is very little stylistic difference between using what is for the majority of the time a noun ("shame") as a verb, and using "guilt" in the same way.


 
To me, common usage is a fair basis for judgment.  There's a scene in a Nero Wolfe book written in the 1940s or early 1950s in which Wolfe states that "contact" shall never be a verb in his household, yet it is unobjectionable to me.  But the author, Rex Stout, was born in the 1880s and evidently felt differently.  My grandchildren may well think nothing of using guilt as a verb in the same way I think nothing of using shame or contact, but it still grates on my ears.


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## Loob

lrosa said:


> I should have known that it would of course be used against me .


I wasn't using it against you, Irosa - I'm sorry if it sounded that way. I was just offering 'unfamiliarity' as a reason why people might react negatively.


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## lrosa

I was only kidding, Loob!


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## cuchuflete

Poor lrosa and Loobita. They have remorsed one another over a guilt-induced misunderstanding.

Loob and Old Novice have hit the nail on the head.  For those familiar with this usage, it won't attract much notice; for those to whom it is novel, it may seem repugnant or a clever neologism.  I'll just find it clunky until I get used to it.  (My life expectancy may or may not allow adequate time...)


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## C. E. Whitehead

I agree with Old Novice, Cuchuflete, and Loob here.

--cew


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