Friday, May 1, 2020

Roberto Osuna Did WHAT?

It's one of the unwritten laws of sports card collecting. If the card has a cartoon on the back, you read it. Recently I picked up a pack of 2019 Heritage on clearance. As I was leafing through the pack, I did my duty and checked out each and every wondrous card. One particular card caught my attention:

2019 Topps Heritage #15 Roberto Osuna (back)

I'll save you eyes the trouble of focusing and enlarge the cartoon.


Normed?

He normed?

Does that sound weird to anyone else? I've only heard of the word norm as a noun. Things are always "the norm". But as a verb? It bothered me enough that I had to look it up.

From Merriam-Webster.com

OK, I can see normed being used as an adjective, but no mention of it being a verb. Maybe it's some slang that the youth of today are saying. When it comes to slang definitions, there's only one place to go!

From UrbanDictionary.com

Wow, that escalated quickly! Given his recent domestic issues, it's probably a good thing if he's getting rebuked by the ladies.

So there you have it! Topps is just making up words. Is it weird that despite all this I still get the gist of what they were trying to convey? I think someone thought average and norm were interchangable, and thus "averaged" became "normed".

Now if only Osuna's card was one of the french O-Pee-Chee parallels...that would have been worth translating!

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9 comments:

  1. I have a sneaking suspicion that things like this are going to become the new "norm" as time progresses. Also, Urban Dictionary? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that such a things exists, but I still kind of am!

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  2. Topps definitely uses the old thesaurus rather indiscriminately in their write-ups. They're always using "initial" in place of "first" in really odd ways. (Such as "he hit his initial major league homer on....) But I haven't noticed them making a verb out of a word like that before. Perhaps they're big fans of Calvin & Hobbes? As Calvin said, "Verbing weirds language."

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  3. Awesome. Reminds me of one of those comedy skits where the guys just make up words to make them sound intelligent.

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  4. Yeah, some of the write-ups are bizarre, almost as if they're trying way too hard to use not your average word. "Normed" is way out there.

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  5. Sounds like the gal I work with. She is always "flustrated" or doing things in "unisync".

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  6. I thought maybe they were referencing the character from Cheers (NORM!) somehow.

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