A question of terminology.

So is it now appropriate to describe a person who has suffered financial loss, loss of property, loss of face or any other form of unpleasantness through being tricked in what to everyone else appeared to be a ludicrously high risk venture as having been "Ginko'd"?


For example, a friend of mine is crying on my shoulder after the break up of his (short lived) marraige. I knew from the start that she was a dirty whore after nothing more than his money. May I say "Man, you sure got ginko'd on that one."?

We call them Indians here.

Me, as a linguist, says "yes". A lovely case of creating new words, just as the famed "Portocarrero Scheme". That's word-formation live. We linguists love that. Prepare to be catalogued!

Turning nouns into verbs is what we British do best.

Now excuse me while I go off computering elsewhere.

Man, they sure got ginko'd! Ginko'd good and proper.

Variants

Listen for these in world soon...

"Totally Ginko'd"
"Well, we're Ginko'd"
"Ginko'd with a chainsaw"
"Ginko'd up"
"You've had enough buddy. You're Ginko'd. I'm taking your keys"

Too general. We need them to be specific to the idea of suffering some form of hardship as a result of a scam or trick that was immediately obvious to everyone else as being just that.

For example, Jack got ginko'd on those magic beans. But the ginko was on them, because they actually turned out to really be magic.

"He don't know whether to Ginko or get Linden'ed."

This is called zero-derivation and works best if your language doesn't have any infinitive markers anymore for verbs, so you can also change verbs into nouns. It's a very fascinating subject, as German, for example, can't easily do that due to the infinitive marker verbs still have. There's also this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin says he likes to verb words...which is a linguistic joke in itself...


...wait, where has everyone gone? I'm not finished!

Yes I've seen that particular Calvin and Hobbes. I've noticed a tendency to turn verbs into nouns too. For example, instead of riding a bicycle, one will often hear someone say that they are "going for a bike ride". I'm a full time student, and part of my day job is working on one of those awful falling-auction tv shopping channels. Some of my less well educated colleagues can often be heard to use the word "bidded", to refer to a bid placed on an item in the past tense. This makes me cringe when I hear it, because even if bid were a verb (instead of one "placing a bid", surely simply "bid" would be the correct past tense.

"Blogging" is another example - nevermind the issue of contraction here too.

Surely "catalogued" isn't a verb either?

I'm not so sure about that...do we have a definitive time on the first usage?

Oh, "to catalogue" is actually fairly old....and believe it or not, even Old English way back before the French invaded Britain already turned nouns into verbs without batting an eyelid! It's easy to misuse, sure, but also a fascinating way to create new words. ESPECIALLY if you use patronyms, proper names that you can turn into more generic things...just ask poor Mr Ponzi...

...but "bidded" SERIOUSLY hurts.

Well if someone presents me with evidence of "ginko'd" being used as a verb in this context, I shall accept defeat. For now let me revel in my short lived glory as a trend-setter.

If I had the full edition of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) handy (which isn't handy at all, being a large collection of monstrous tomes), I *could* look it up, they give the first occurrences of their entries.....

Hang on there.

You've got my ire up now.

The French have never invaded Britain. The Norman aristocracy were not French. They were descendants of the Viking raiders who settled what became northern France. It's true that William the Conqueror owed allegiance to the then King of France, and that many French knights joined him - but the Normans themselves were norsemen, as the name suggests.

I can accept being beaten by Vikings. Vikings are cool.

With all due humbleness I direct you to this thread, specifically Post #2.
/327/aa/201807/1.html

Okay, I've found a few examples of people using Ginko'd or ginkoed as a verb before me. However, they all seem to be a more general context of "having something unpleasant happen". I need a solid example of someone using it specifically to mean being scammed by an OBVIOUS scam. It's very important that this be part of the definition of the verb - that the scam in question was obvious to everyone else who didn't take part right from the start.

Yeah yeah, wimpy Vikings who went to sunny France to get out of their cold and wet country....who ended up speaking Norman French which wasn't even proper French at all AND brought that to Britain....

Whereas the real Vikings, the ones who had invaded Britain earlier, brought cool stuff to the English language, such as the personal pronouns "they", "their", and "them", and stuff like "sky", and..."skirt"...er.....and the good old tradition of pillaging monasteries.....not that French crap where suddenly you call your dead cow on the plate "beef", or your dead pig "pork"!

That's the one I found. It refers to missing inventory though, and still seems to be in the general context of merely "having something bad happen to you". We need more specific context. I'm sure there is one out there.

Got a local dialect for the Linguist:

Did yinzes git Ginko'd or wah? Sounds like they redd aht yinzes account.


*hint* Only one place known for "yinz" (that I know of)

HEH! Lets see if any of yinz can figger aht wah da hell I jest says.

Southwest Pennsylvania.

I'm from the Isle of Man, so there's a good chance I have some Danish or Norwegian blood there lurking in the background.

I'd like to think so.

I also like the idea of referring to dead cow on a plate as "cow" and pig as "pig". Why try to disguise the true nature of something so tasty and wonderful.

Missing Inventory? That was 31,000 Lindens that went missing. I think that satisfies your criteria Sonny Jim.

Was it an obvious scam that anyone with eyes could see was a scam from the start?

If so then I concede defeat, having enjoyed my moment in the sun.

You might also be a Celt! Manx is a fascinating topic too.....

...and I'm very much into language history, and if I don't stop NOW, I'll never go to bed today. It's almost five in the morning here....