Monday, February 25, 2008

"We're at war,...

pick a side!" To quote the sagacious Stephen Colbert, It's time to take a stand on the most controversial issue in out sport. We align ourselves every time we write a blog post, or google search the latest neoprene acceessory.

Is it waterskiing or water skiing?
Space or compound word??????

Even dictionary.com
gives no clear answer, as both versions appear.


ebay searches give a different set of results for waterski and water ski keyword searches.


Again borrowing form the esteemed Mr. Colbert, the market -always a good starting point for shouting matches- has apparently spoken on this one. Keyword "waterski" nets 66 items. Keyword "water ski" turns up 345.

Let the polarizing debate and mudslinging begin.
Courageously, I'll wait this one out, go with the enentual winner, and claim I was right all along.

4 comments:

Rowboat Abides said...

Go with Waterski, one word. Don't let the man keep you down. The little red lines under the words are pretty anyways.

Libby said...

Water is a modifier. So it is two words. Snow Skiing or Water Skiing. Both are acts of skiing, only the phase of the water underneath changes. I believe the argument to the contrary would cite baseball, softball, and basketball as examples. In that case, I offer this solution: the verb is one word (I'm going to go waterski.) and the noun is two (I just bought a bitchin' flourescent water ski.).

But what do I know, I argue even more ridiculous issues for a living.

Rowboat Abides said...

Holy smokes, who is this libby girl and...whoa...that is a good point about the verb-noun thing.

Libby said...

Libby is the author's very cool wife. She doesn't ski, but spends her time dressing Rykert in hand knits. She doesn't ski because Rykert won't buy her a fancy pink water ski.