Eggcorn Forum

There’s a comment-closed discussion here the gist of which is that some, particularly kids from the Chicago area, seem to be innovating a verb to verse which means something like “to compete against or be an opponent of (in some game or sport)”. The discussion includes these comments:

It seems to come from a misunderstanding, based on pronunciation, of “versus” as “verses” (i.e., of a Latin term misheard as an English 3rd-person verb): The headline “Michael vs. Tyler” is heard as the active sentence “Michael verses Tyler”. I first heard this within the last year from my 9-year-old son and his friends. They define it as “to battle”.

My 8-year-old son says this quite often, and not just in the context of the dreaded trading card games (Yu-Gi-oh, Pokemon, etc.) When he’s reading the sports pages he’ll say things like “The Patriots versed Green Bay.”

My son, and in fact every other child in my area who is involved in sports, uses a verb to indicate which team he is competing against: “to verse,” as in, “Who are we versing tonight?” Or, “We versed the Dodgers yesterday.” It obviously derives from the Latin preposition “versus.”

One later comment dates it back to 1984, in New York; another commenter thinks it may be attributed to the French verb verser (“overturn, upset”), ‘rather than to the cringeworthy mauling of “versus.”’
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I have collected a number of cases outside of games or juvenile speech. E.g.

the problem of we verses them

team ministry verses individual and independent ministry

[they] recognized their need to heal as a priority verses telling everyone everything right away.

There has always been a double standard when it comes to understanding and explaining the Muslim religion verses Christianity

the merits of William Wordsworth’s poems verses that of his comrade, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

childish thinking verses adult thinking and behavior

It strikes me that some might think of versing as instructing, teaching, schooling. Some such thing almost has to be there underlying the word or phrase ( well) versed (in a subject). These notions can easily grade over into correcting someone, showing that he or she is wrong. When A verses B, perhaps A is schooling B in the sense of correcting B. When the Patriots versed Green Bay they may have taught them a lesson.
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Something similar may be going on in lesson < lessen
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It seems particularly appropriate for (the merits of) one poet’s poems to verse another’s.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-05-23 19:08:28)