Verses vs. versus
Posted by Neal on June 7, 2005
A year ago, I did a guest post on Agoraphilia about Doug’s use of the word verse to mean, “fight against, especially in a contest or tournament setting.” I predicted we’d see more of it as members of his generation grew up. A year later, Doug is still using verse in this way:
I don’t like soccer practice, because we always have to verse the yellow team, and I don’t like versing them.
As Adam has learned to play some of Doug’s videogames, he’s picked up this verb, too. He’ll watch Doug playing a videogame and ask, “Who are you versing?” And just this afternoon, I heard it from two other kids. Doug and Adam and I were at Chuck E. Cheese this afternoon with a friend of Doug’s. This friend had run out of game tokens, so he was pleased when another kid there invited him to play on a two-person game with him, and even spotted him a token to do it. Doug’s friend said:
He’s giving me a token so I can verse him!
I scarcely had time to register that attestation of the innovative verse when I heard it again. This time it came from a friend of Adam’s that we’d met there, who was about to do a different two-player game with his brother. He said,
Mom, I want to verse him!
Their mother confirmed that her boys used verse as a verb all the time at home when they played on their Playstation.
And now, this very evening, what should I find but an account of kids in British Columbia with the verse innovation, in this post from Derryl Murphy (thanks to languagehat). He reports:
Also, when teams face each other in a sporting event, or when there is any other sort of contest, it’s now Us verse Them. I versed him shooting hoops today. We’ll verse the Lions in soccer tomorrow.
Not to mention the colleague of Glen’s in California who said she heard it quite a bit from her son and his friends. Yes, the new verse is definitely getting around. In fact…
Sometimes, when I’ve been playing on the kids’ SpongeBob Typing Skills program, and they’ve asked me how far I’ve gotten, I’ll tell them,
I’m … going against … Mr . Krabs now.
The pause is me thinking, “What’s the word? Versing? No! I know I had a word for this before verse was invented. Oh, yeah, going against (I think). Hmmm… versing… so short, so convenient… No! Must resist!”
June 8, 2005 at 9:13 am
Here on Long Island, I’ve heard “verse” used as you’ve described by my stepson and his friends, starting around age 5. They seem to have outgrown that usage now at age 11.
June 10, 2005 at 11:16 am
“Verse” isn’t as new as you imply. From a comment to my entry:
The usage of “verse” as a back-formation from “versus” has become widespread even among adults. The Usenet archive suggests that the verb found popularity amongst gamers and then spread to wider usage in the mid-’90s:
Date: 1995/02/13
Newsgroup: alt.games.sf2
Its a fairly pointless exercise, Versing characters from different arcades against each other anyway…
Date: 1995/09/23
Newsgroup: rec.games.video.sony
When versing the black car, remember that the first is a warmup lap…
Date: 1996/01/22
Newsgroup: rec.motorcycles.dirt
So if I’m right, the next one should be on 1/28 at 3pm est on ESPN2. Unfortunately, it’s versing the Superbowl!
Date: 1996/06/10
Newsgroup: alt.tv.babylon-5
I have noticed one thing, there seems to be a lot of “B”s versing “S”s.
Date: 1996/09/27
Newsgroup: alt.sports.hockey.rhi
I saw a game with them, but I don’t know who they were versing …
Posted by: Ben Zimmer at June 5, 2005 11:58 PM
June 11, 2005 at 9:27 pm
Well, there’s always simply “I’m against Mr Krab now”, or “I’m fighting Mr Krab now”, or even just “I’m at Mr Krab”. Outside the realm of fight games, you’ve got playing, as in “the Rabbits are playing the Cougars, and you might guess how that will turn out.”
So it’s not like there was a total void being filled by “verse”.
June 29, 2005 at 9:45 pm
I have to admit that the “vs.”=”verse” {verb} innovation has always been a pet peeve of mine–I’m 24, from the greater Bridgeport area in southern Connecticut, and I grew up hearing this, both during video games and during various other games (”OK lets play pingpong, you and bob wanna verse me and tom?”). {note to self–was that punctuation correct?) It seems to me a pretty intuitive jump–the latin term “versus” seen in the context of “this one against that one” would lead anyone young enough to be grammatically/linguistically flexible to adapt this specialized usage to a more general one. Granted there are preexisting alternatives, but when you always see and hear it used in the context of sporting events, it’s easy to misconstrue its usage.
But even though I can understand how the change came about, I still don’t like it!
September 26, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I think that versing is right because people always say thngs like”who are you versing in sport today”. And nearly everyone in my class says so too. I think that only older people use versus and younger people use versing.But older people sometimes use it too. So nearly everybody uses it.I think it’s an everyday word. My parents and I have used it since we were able to talk. I don’t think it matters if it’s not a verb but we can still use it because it’s not against the law.
March 10, 2008 at 11:41 pm
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March 18, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Sorry to bring this up again, but I was looking to see if anyone else had ever noticed this verb, and found this.
My kids have been using the verb “verse”–”He was versing me in basketball”–for YEARS, since G1 (the oldest, a DD) was in kindergarten. She’s in 8th now.
It’s a very valuable verb–they and their friends have used it quite happily for years.
I’m ready to start lobbying for inclusion in dictionaries–it’s just so useful!
March 19, 2008 at 6:36 am
Dear Mr. Neal,
Yep, Holt again. I actually use verse all the time (I think it’s a kids thing (I mean, what do you expect? I’m nine-years-old! Doug’s age now!)). I might have got it from Doug, but I was saying it WAY before I met him.