/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>15189717
Your premise is that using "up" as a verb somehow "lowers the level of language" in the first place, and there's just no reason to think this. The specific verb used doesn't lower the complexity of the sentence or thought. (Ignoring the fact that the link between vocabulary and intelligence isn't even solid).
Your argument is that "up" is inherently a preposition and this for some reason makes it "wrong" to use it as a verb. This is plainly not how language works. Nothing about "up" makes it inherently a preposition except for the fact that that's how people use it. When people start using it as a verb, it becomes a verb. This is the basic concept of descriptivism. What makes even less sense is the fact that you seem fine with verb-noun conversion but for some reason arbitrarily draw the line at prepositions. Noun-verb conversion is a natural part of English, but preposition-verb conversion will destroy civilization? Arguing that conversion somehow lowers the level of a language is absurd. The existence of "up" doesn't take away all the other synonyms like "improve" and "increase"; now we have one more word for it. The result is a broadening of the English vocabulary, not narrowing as you seem to think. As other posters have pointed out, each synonym has a different degree of formality. The difference between "Increase your skill" and "Up your game" conveys a lot of information by tone and word choice alone.
Plus, if we're following the line of reasoning in your premise, the process of conversion inherently shows creativity and high-level thought.
Typical prescriptivist doomsaying and pearl-clutching. All the words in those 1940s books you jerk it to got there only by undergoing the exact same process of change you're bitching about now.


Case in point: "down" has been used as a verb since the fifteen-fucking-hundreds. Source: OED
You have no idea what you're talking about. You're spewing the language equivalent of "nofap gives you superpowers".