'Disconnect' is Not a Noun!

I read this in the Irish Times:

'ONE EXPLANATION advanced for the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty is a disconnect between voters and their Oireachtas representatives.'

And this in Brian Cowen's speech to his lords and masters in the EU Council:

'Expression of a "disconnect" between the citizens and Europe, its institutions and procedures, is also not unique to Ireland.'

Now, the word 'disconnect' is a verb. The OED states that it is the verb to 'break the connection of (things, ideas, etc.)' and to 'put (an electrical device) out of action by disconnecting the parts, esp. by pulling out the plug'. That's what the word means. There is no such thing as 'a' disconnect, or 'the' disconnect, or 'her' disconnect, or 'his' disconnect. It is a verb.The only reason the seemingly ill-educated elite (academics, politicians, journalists, chimpanzees) use it as a noun is because they don't know about...

'Disconnection'. Yes, disconnection. What obscure vocabulary I'm using! Have you ever seen that word before? Let me guide you. It is a noun, meaning 'the act or an instance of disconnecting; the state of being disconnected'.

GET. THAT. THROUGH. YOUR. THICK. FUCKING. SKULLS.

If I was the editor of the Irish Times and saw that, I'd sack the whole damn staff!

Literacy, people, literacy.

[This has been emailed to lettersed@irish-times.ie]

Ah, you mean nominalisation... ;}P>

*lol* Awesome. Thanx for the laugh.

thank you thank you thank you.

Whichever fecker started it should be lined up and shot.

Amen.

Thank you.

Thank you. This is certainly one of the most irritating and unnecessary current misuses of a word.

I'm weighing in two years late on this, but the OED includes a definition of "disconnect" as a noun, dating its usage back to the 1950s.

Okay, so it's in the OED now, and they traced it all the way back, but in all those 50 years it must have been some kind of weird fucked-up cult thing. It certainly wasn't mainstream 15 years ago, because it didn't warrant inclusion in my 1995 edition of the OED.