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I haven't heard this term before, but maybe that's just me: "... it became clear that ad retargeting—in which you show ads to people who recently visited your
by bdevine 12y ago
I haven't heard this term before, but maybe that's just me:
"... it became clear that ad retargeting—in which you show ads to people who recently visited your website—was where MARKETEERING dollars were going" (emphasis mine).
That's an interesting turn of phrase: it evokes Disney's Imagineers, who can be loosely said to be engineers with a heavily creative bent, and applies it to the act of marketing, thereby implying a more heavily creative and technically adept form of "marketer". I wonder if "X-eer" is an inchoate language trend?
- Pxtl 12y agoHah, my instinct is the opposite. To me it invokes a racketeer - somebody who has carved out a business niche for themselves by creating problems to solve instead of finding them.
- bdevine 12y agoNice catch! I didn't go there at all, but maybe I should have!
- smacktoward 12y agoNah -- "marketeer" is a modern formulation, but the basic form of "X-eer" has been in use for a long time now. Some examples: Mountaineer: first use 1600s (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mountaineer&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mountaineer&allowed...) Pamphleteer: first use 1640s (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pamphleteer&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pamphleteer&allowed...) Auctioneer: first use 1708 (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=auctioneer&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=auctioneer&allowed_...) Profiteer: first use 1910-1915 (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/profiteer http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/profiteer) There are even earlier examples in English (pioneer and charioteer, for instance), but those didn't come from adding "-eer" to an activity; they were loanwords (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loanword http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loanword) from other languages, like Old French, which used "-ier", "-eur" and "-aire" the way we use "-eer" today. (So charioteer, for instance, started out as charioteur.) Once the words were adopted by English, the spelling migrated to the form we know today.
- bdevine 12y agoGood points all. This is what I get for mouthing off from my phone instead of taking the time to think about what I'm saying. I will say though that given the continuing productivity of language, the fact that those earlier examples exist doesn't necessarily preclude my supposition that "X-eer" could see an uptick in neologistic usage - although again you're quite right that it wouldn't be "inchoate" in the sense of not being extant.