We do not signup, login or check­out when we buy prod­ucts online. We do not startup, shut­down or backup our computers. The rea­son: these words, pri­mar­ily used in com­put­ing con­texts, are not verbs.

These are just some of the “bad bad verbs” fea­tured on a site ded­i­cated to “inform­ing peo­ple about words that are not verbs, even though peo­ple mis­use them that way”. From what I can gather, this all started with loginisnotaverb.com:

Despite what many peo­ple — mostly in the com­puter field — think, “login” is not a verb. It’s sim­ply not. Whether or not “login” is a word at all may spark a debate in some cir­cles, but assum­ing it is then it may act as many parts of speech, but not as a verb.

And so it goes with all of these non-verbs:

  • backup
  • car­ry­out
  • check­out
  • cutover
  • cut­off
  • failover
  • login
  • logoff
  • logon
  • logout
  • lock­down
  • pickup
  • setup
  • shut­down
  • shut­off
  • signin
  • sig­noff
  • sig­nout
  • signup
  • startup

Of course, there’s the MeFi and HN threads to accom­pany your reading.