Does the non-word addicting have to appear on digg at least once a day or something?
Ain't that the truth? Well, sort of.
It might be that the only people doing more damage to common English than those using addicting where they mean addictive are those responding that addicting isn't even a word. No, wait, it's the people responding that addicting is a word and then claiming that the two are interchangeable. Does anyone use these words correctly?
For the record, addicting is in fact a word. A transitive verb, more precisely. These are verbs that require a direct object (like abuse, as in The Digg user physically abused the grammarian.) And we all seem to agree that addictive is a word. An adjective. Those are describy words. You remember those. Adjective != verb. Addictive != addicting. An interesting fact about dictionaries is that when two forms of a word are included, interchangeability is not implied.
When someone says "Sudoku is addicting," they almost certainly mean that a property of the game is that it causes addiction, and they should have described it as addictive. But it's not strictly improper; they might mean that the game is currently causing addiction in those who encounter it -- the subject's object is implicit in this case -- and we'd have something that's both grammatically correct and meaningful.
I'm off on this rant because this type of mistake sufficiently rebukes the oft-heard response to grammatical nit-picking: "c'mon, you know what I mean!" The simple truth is that, well, maybe not. Which of the two did our puzzle-lover intend to convey? That Sudoku is actively addicting those who play it, or that it has the property of causing addiction? These are different things. They mean different things. And if you don't tell me what you mean, or if the context leads me to believe you've made a common mistake, then I've just gotta' guess.
It's just like the saying says, you know? In the poker game of communication, ambiguity is the rake. It's the fuckin' rake.
Thank You,
I needed this to get my sleep deprived mind on to something else. My appreciation also goes to digg reader fatham for linking me here.