Meet the newest pet peeve

[hummingwolf]

It concerns me that there are people who use "concerning" as an adjective.

"Son, it is concerning to me that you won't put the candy back on the shelf when I ask you to."

"The bank tells me that the account does not exist even though you told me on Monday that it did. I find this concerning. Very concerning."


::shudder::

As my eleventh-grade English teacher used to ask: "Is this what drugs does to you?"


Edit: gurdonark tells me that this is part of southern (US) regional dialect. A Google search for the phrase "very concerning" turns up a bunch of sites in the UK as well. I don't recall hearing "concerning" used this way before, but it's possible that I did and thought at the time that it was merely an anomaly. The verb "concern" just doesn't work that way for me. The phrase "very concerning" sounds as wrong to me as "very running," which in my dialect is very, very wrong.

Comments

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Correction: It's entirely possible that I have heard "concerning" used as an adjective before, but if so, it must have seemed like an anomaly at the time. Now it seems to be common enough to catch my attention, and it sounds very strange to my ears.