Re: "Persist" as a transitive verb? <gack!>

[Victoria Camgros <vcamgros -at- persistence -dot- com>]

At 11:41 AM 5/11/01 -0500, you wrote:
Has anyone run into cases of "persist" being used as a transitive verb?
The context is a white paper, written by a software engineer, for a
technical audience. The phrase is referring to information that "must be
persisted." <Ack! Ptoie!>

Um, Roy, even here at Persistence, where our business is a whole lot about 
persisting stuff, we don't use the verb  that way in our documentation.

It's fine in informal technical discussion. Just as you might say "cd to 
/user/local" instead of "change directories ..." But the word really 
doesn't work that way in English.

We *do* say "make persistent". Or "store its state". Or "write its state to 
persistent storage".

One *could* argue that, if the object itself is doing the writing, it is 
"persisting." But it still feels like mangled English. Even 
non-propeller-heads can understand the other constructions.

I'd be interested in anything else you learn.

Vickie


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