Grammar Girl here. I'm Injohn Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.

Today we're going to talk about why kids say they're versing other teams and players, and then I have a wiblin about a thing imaging.

I often get questions about why kids say they're versing other kids.

For example, Ron M remembers his sons starting to use the phrasing

when they became WrestleMania fans

and says he even hears professional sportscaster say it.

A listener named Jackie says her kids talk about versing other kids in soccer games,

and a follower who goes by me-ma on Blue Sky described hearing people say,

in last night's match, Tigers versed cubs. So when I first started getting questions about

versing to mean playing years ago, I thought it might be a regionalism, like how people are more likely to say

spendy in Oregon than in Florida. So I surveyed people on the Grammar Girl Facebook page,

and what I found instead is that it's an age-related phenomenon. People say versing everywhere,

but they're often kids. Although it's not unheard of among older people,

back in 2012, my Facebook followers reported hearing most often from elementary school kids.

The Oxford English Dictionary says this use is chiefly U.S., but among my followers, it seemed to be especially common in Australia and New Zealand.

Now, it could just be a statistical blip because I have fewer followers in those countries

than in the U.S.

But Karen from Eastern Australia wrote,

Verse is a very common formulation here, especially among TV sports journalists.

I even saw it on a billboard outside

our local football stadium, Team A versus Team B. If you go to the transcript of this article

at quick and dirty tips.com, you can see the map I made from people's responses. So there are many

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