Doing Grown-Up Tasks, in Millennial Slang
What allows some nouns to become widely verbed? To me, commonly verbed nouns typically seem to contain an action within them—a specific Deed linked closely enough to the Thing for the conversion to be intuitive and useful. You can only do one thing on the website Google; we all know what a parrot is famous for doing all the time; having access is inextricable from the activity of accessing. Meanwhile, Pepsi, playlists, and peace have a multitude of associated activities and therefore must rely heavily on context if we’re going to verb them. To turn a Thing into an Action, you need the Thing to be bound up in an associated Action to begin with, so the meaning of the new verb unfurls naturally from the old noun.
So what action unfurls naturally from the noun adult? Adulting means more than just “reaching biological maturity” or “becoming fully grown.” To adult is to engage in the responsibilities of modern adulthood. Filing taxes, cooking a meal, buying renter’s insurance—Millennials coming of age use the verb to describe engaging in the mundane tasks of mature life with characteristic self-effacing irony. The so-called snowflake generation, for whom stages of development, such as starting a family or owning a home, have commonly been delayed, engages in the normal day-to-day activities of adulthood with a smirking, surreal surprise. Adult became adulting as a generation entered that period feeling somewhat unprepared, wanting to express that maturity means not only reaching a certain point in your life, but also attending to the concomitant tasks. Hence our Thursday-level clue: “Doing grown-up tasks, in Millennial slang.”
by Caleb Madison at The Atlantic