Cool, or not? Options

[rvw]

I could do without "vet" (as in investigate) and "advert" (short for "advertisement"). What's the rush? Let's use the whole words.

How do you feel?

[Tinker Grey]

As best I can tell, the word vet derives from veterinary. That's the consensus of my web search. Some suggest veto and others veteran.

How do you feel about ad as short for advertisement?

[Pheasance]

I find "vet" useful in my work. We don't use it to mean "investigate," so using the longer word would not be appropriate. It's used more in the sense of to run something by someone or to get someone's input or approval before making something final or public.

I don't like "advert," but I think that's just because it's British and thus sounds affected if used by a US speaker. I'm okay with "ad."

[Freond]

Etymonline supports the veterinary source: the colloquial sense of "subject to careful examination" (as of an animal by a veterinarian, especially of a horse before a race) is first attested 1904, in Kipling."

Today, as Pheas points out, it's a new verb, with a meaning unto itself. Here's my longer take on it, which agrees with hers.

Vetting something or something, to me, implies somewhat different things, depending on whether we're talking about things or people. Words, advertising, an ad campaign, or a list of candidates will be approved as is, changed before being finalized; elimination is not really an option, because something will come out at the end of the process. A contract will be hammered out, some list of candidates will be delivered to the party chair, there will be an ad campaign. All this will happen after the lawyers have vetted the language or the list, and approved the end result. When an individual person (or animal, I guess) is vetted, he or she will be either approved or eliminated. You can't say, "OK, he can run for President, but we have to eliminate his resignation as Governor and his past indiscretions from his record." People are what they are, and they are either a viable candidate or not, so for a person tting is an elimination process, not an editing process.

[rvw]

I thought "vet" was a trendy, cool way of saying "investigate." I had no idea it can from "veterinarian"! Here is dictionary.com's full entry.

vet
1  /vɛt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [vet] Show IPA noun, verb, vet⋅ted, vet⋅ting. Informal.
–noun
1. veterinarian.
–verb (used with object)
2. to examine or treat in one's capacity as a veterinarian or as a doctor.
3. to appraise, verify, or check for accuracy, authenticity, validity, etc.: An expert vetted the manuscript before publication.
–verb (used without object)
4. to work as a veterinarian.
Use vet in a Sentence
See images of vet
Search vet on the Web
Origin:
1860–65; short for veterinarian

[Pheasance]

If I've been using it, that is a nearly ironclad guarantee that it is neither trendy nor cool!

[Subordinate Claw...]

I have little reason to use it. I'm not a vetting man.

But, seriously, I've read it and heard it since forever, it seems. Almost always, it seems to me to be a political pre-campaign/post campaign issue wherein people running for office get vetted (placed under a microscope to seek out even the most miniscule of OMG no-no's) by their potential backers. Then, once they appear to be pristine, get their campaign money, and are elected, they start vetting their potential staffers.

As humans, I don't think any of us would be squeaky-clean. I mean, why bother to run for office if you know you once flicked a booger at your fourth-grade teacher? It's gonna hit the front page (not the booger; the incident). (BTW is that last semicolon legit?)

Ewww, Claws, you could use an analogy transplant, ya know?

[Osea]

Just a comma--contrasting elements. Semicolons can separate phrases (not seen much anymore: "He gave him, long a friend,* his watch; his car; his wallet; and his wife.").

*Thanks to JoeB for pointing out I'm still the world's worst self-proofer.

(not the booger; the incident). (BTW is that last semicolon legit?)

Ewww, Claws, you could use an analogy transplant, ya know?