I heard this in a conference call yesterday.<\/p>\n
Problem:<\/strong> Explanation:<\/strong> The person who said “I thought that the ask of me was …” was referring to a request<\/em> that someone had made to him. This gives us the solution.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, I increasingly hear Americans misuse “ask” as a substitute for the noun “request”. I believe that this is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say the one-syllable “ask” than to say the two-syllable “request”.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> I heard this in a conference call yesterday. Problem: The word “ask” is not a noun, except when capitalized, in which case it means something different. Explanation: Except for the capitalized form “Ask” — spelled CAPITAL-A-S-K — which refers in Scandinavian mythology to the first man, who was made from an ash tree by the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,15,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devolution-toward-simpler","category-nouns","category-verbs"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThe word “ask” is not a noun, except when capitalized, in which case it means something different.<\/p>\n
\nExcept for the capitalized form “Ask” — spelled CAPITAL-A-S-K — which refers in Scandinavian mythology to the first man, who was made from an ash tree by the Scandinavian gods, the word “ask” is a verb, not<\/em> a noun.<\/p>\n
\n“I thought that the request to me was …”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"