Gerontology made easy with Sue de Groot, who turned 50 last week Perhaps I'm a late bloomer, or perhaps I have been too distracted by matters of pressing national interest (will the SABC really insist that the writers of The Bold and the Beautiful kill off all characters played by foreigners and replace them with South Africans?) to notice the maturation of the most annoying new word I have heard for a long time.Forgive me if this is old hat to you, but when a press release headed "Adulting Made Easy" flashed across my screen (at least it forewent the indignity of an adolescent exclamation mark), all my pedantic hair stood up on end.story_article_left1Pedantic or not, my hair has lost something of its hue and lustre since reaching what some call adulthood and what others refer to cruelly as middle age. What if I live to 150, as scientists say we all might if we eat our greens and avoid the sun? That would make me only ... well, less than middle-aged.But back to adulting. My colleagues have not had their attention diverted from adulting by the threatened departure of Brooke Logan from our daytime screens and the anticipated appearance of Patricia Lewis as a long-lost second cousin of the Forrester clan. They tell me that this product of denominalisation - also known as "verbing" - has been seeping its gangrenous waste all over healthy parts of speech for some time now. I don't know how I missed it."Adulting" has not made it onto the latest list of new words published by the Oxford English Dictionary. "Carnapping" (an alternative word for the unsanctioned appropriation of one's vehicle) is there and so is "Masshole" (an uncomplimentary term for someone who lives in Massachusetts). Some new words - "mahala" and "zef" - come from South Africa, and "decluttering" now has an official stamp on it, so tell your spellchecker to stop underlining it in red."Adulting", however, is not yet a member of the fully fledged words party. In language terms, the verb "to adult" is still a spring chicken. Let's hope it refuses broccoli, eschews sunscreen and does not make it past puberty, because as much as we might allow for the transformation of nouns into verbs - which has been going on for millennia - this is a pair of false teeth too far. What on earth is wrong with merely "growing up"?story_article_right2If I sound like a crusty old fuddy-duddy, it's not because I have anything against new words. Nor do I object to words drummed up by members of a generation who think Bob Dylan was a Welsh poet. (I was going to say "who think Justin Bieber is a musician" but that would have been rude.)New words get more traction in the press than do old words. The bias towards bright young things is as evident in language as it is on billboards. All you have to do is look at the adjectives and idioms associated with youth - fresh, budding, new, green, blossoming, tender, fledgling - and compare them with terms that describe the elderly - codger, geriatric, crusty, decrepit, senile, ancient, fossil, over the hill ... Even the least adult among us cannot miss the point.Don't get me wrong. I love young people and I love new words. My main problem with the notice that caused all the trouble, the one offering to make adulting easy, is that adulting is never easy. Take away its flashy back-formed title and it is nothing more than growing old.I think those of us who have already adulted (biologically at least) should strike back and invent a new word: "childing". You're never too old to child, and by this I do not mean the spawning of offspring. I mean the cultivation of a fresh, green, tender, verdant view of the world. A person who has successfully childed is one who delights in change but not in idiocy...