Grammar experts, I need your help

[Joe Biden 2020]

I am having a discussion with a friend from my college town on facebook about the past tense form of the word "text".  Is it "texted" or is there a more proper form of the word text as used as a verb.

Another part of the discussion is the word "lightning" as in the weather phenomena.  Do you say "It is lightning out" or "It lightninged last night".  I always say "There was lightning last night".

I seriously don't know the answers to the two questions, so this is a genuine inquiry!

[Хahar 🤔]

It's fine to say "texted",  but "sent a text message" would be more formal. On the other hand, "lightninged" is not correct, because "lightning" is not a verb.

[Joe Biden 2020]

Thank you, Xahar.

[ilikeverin]

My dad has "text" for the past tense form of "text", too.  I'm not sure what that's about; I suppose [tɛkstɪd] is a bit of a mouthful.  Backforming "lightning" into a verb is interesting; I'm perfectly fine converting it into a verb if someone else is doing so, but the present progressive of it would be "lightninging".

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

My dad has "text" for the past tense form of "text", too.  I'm not sure what that's about; I suppose [tɛkstɪd] is a bit of a mouthful.  Backforming "lightning" into a verb is interesting; I'm perfectly fine converting it into a verb if someone else is doing so, but the present progressive of it would be "lightninging".

Actually, Merriam-Webster lists "lightning" as an intransitive verb, so "lightninged" would be the proper form accordingly.  That being said, the present progressive form is extremely awkward.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I'd say "there was lightning last night" or "there is lightning outside".   Yet, I'd say "it's thundering and lightning outside"

It's a relic of our Germanic lingual roots.  German has all sorts of words like lightning.. Ordnung (order)... if you just changed the ung to ing (which is what we do in english), it'd be ordning instead of order, which sounds more Frenchy.

But by that logic, "science" would be something weird like "nature wittingship" (Naturwissenschaft) as wissen is the Germanic form "to wit" or to "know" and schaft is the German suffix for "ship", as in friendship (freundschaft).

The more you know... the more things begin to converge.

[ilikeverin]

My dad has "text" for the past tense form of "text", too.  I'm not sure what that's about; I suppose [tɛkstɪd] is a bit of a mouthful.  Backforming "lightning" into a verb is interesting; I'm perfectly fine converting it into a verb if someone else is doing so, but the present progressive of it would be "lightninging".

Actually, Merriam-Webster lists "lightning" as an intransitive verb, so "lightninged" would be the proper form accordingly.  That being said, the present progressive form is extremely awkward.

Er?  "It is lightninged outside"?  "-ed" is for past tense in English, as well as the "past participle" (for perfect constructions).

[Ban my account ffs!]

My dad has "text" for the past tense form of "text", too.  I'm not sure what that's about; I suppose [tɛkstɪd] is a bit of a mouthful.  Backforming "lightning" into a verb is interesting; I'm perfectly fine converting it into a verb if someone else is doing so, but the present progressive of it would be "lightninging".

Actually, Merriam-Webster lists "lightning" as an intransitive verb, so "lightninged" would be the proper form accordingly.  That being said, the present progressive form is extremely awkward.

Er?  "It is lightninged outside"?  "-ed" is for past tense in English, as well as the "past participle" (for perfect constructions).

"It has lightninged outside."

We've dropped "to be" from most present perfect constructions... but we used to use it in some cases "Joy to the world, the Lord is come." 

Again, another relic of our Germanic roots.

We still use it in some cases, though "Where is he?"  "He is gone."  He has gone sounds weird.  But we frame that more as an adjective than a verb.

[ilikeverin]

My dad has "text" for the past tense form of "text", too.  I'm not sure what that's about; I suppose [tɛkstɪd] is a bit of a mouthful.  Backforming "lightning" into a verb is interesting; I'm perfectly fine converting it into a verb if someone else is doing so, but the present progressive of it would be "lightninging".

Actually, Merriam-Webster lists "lightning" as an intransitive verb, so "lightninged" would be the proper form accordingly.  That being said, the present progressive form is extremely awkward.

Er?  "It is lightninged outside"?  "-ed" is for past tense in English, as well as the "past participle" (for perfect constructions).

"It has lightninged outside."

Well, yes, but I said the progressive would be "lightninging", and "it is lightning out" is clearly a progressive context.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Texted is fine. I use it all the time.

[minionofmidas]

Surely if "lightning" is to be verbed, it should be as a present progressive of a backformed verb "to lighten"?

It lightens; it is lightning.
It lightened; it was lightning. "Lightninging" is just offensive.

Text is obviously a newlyformed weak verb, anything but "texted" would be highly irregular.

[angus]

Lightninging and lightninged both sound stupid. 

I hear texted quite a bit.  Makes me cringe, but then "bunless burgers" also make me cringe.  I think "texted" will become part of the lingo.

[DemPGH]

"Texted" would be fine - that's a new usage of "to text" as a verb and is perfectly acceptable. In baseball there is "flied out" - as in, hit a fly ball to the outfield that resulted in an out. It's not "flew out" - because that would imply something altogether different, I guess that the batter sprouted wings and flew to the outfield, so "flied out" is perfectly fine in that context as it is a new usage. That's why the "living language" concept is cool.

This deal with lightning is interesting. My dictionary takes the easy way out - it does say the word can technically be an intransitive verb (sorry, do not recall the difference as I am not a fan of the fine nuances of grammar), and the example is, "Last night it started to lightning." I have never once seen "lightninged" or even worse, "lighteninging." On style alone I just would not use it that way. If I were to use it as a verb I would keep it in the infinitive.

[minionofmidas]

Surely if "lightning" is to be verbed, it should be as a present progressive of a backformed verb "to lighten"?

It lightens; it is lightning.
It lightened; it was lightning.

Looking it up, and yes that is indeed the origin. Not related to German -ung, but to German -end. (The merger of these two forms in Middle English has been a large part of the reason why you modern Anglophones use the present progressive so much. It works well.)

Oh, and wiktionary calls the verb "to lightning"

You must be logged in to read this quote.

- where "impersonal" here means that the only standard use is the form "it lightnings" - not that I'd consider that standard either.

[memphis]

Text was not a verb until recently, but that doesn't hurt my feelings. Language is an ever changing thing. At a certain point, one just has to accept a fait accompli. Whom is at death's door. Life goes on. I suspect the -ly suffix for adverbs is next, but I'm sticking with it for the moment. Now that SMS is omnipresent, it's very helpful to be able to text someone. I would definately use texted as the past tense. I am unaware of any new verbs that use an irregular past tense. Creating that would be a much more complicated affair. On the other hand, I never use lightning as a verb, mostly because I do not hear others using it. Instead, I hear "There was a lot of lightning last night." In the future, if I hear lightning used frequently as a verb by others, I can adapt. Can't have all the kids thinking I'm not hip to their speech.

[minionofmidas]

So we verbed "text" before you did. That's nice. (And with a different meaning. Several ones.)

[Franzl]

So we verbed "text" before you did. That's nice. (And with a different meaning. Several ones.)

Women tend to be good at the primary meaning I'm thinking of...

[memphis]

So we verbed "text" before you did. That's nice. (And with a different meaning. Several ones.)

Women tend to be good at the primary meaning I'm thinking of...

Careful now. You'll have the asexual trans victomologists knoking on your door shortly. After all, they know so much about what it's like to be a woman