Reference as a verb form meaning "make/making specific reference to" has a certain officialese usefulness. File it under jargon if you must.

No conservative accepts Spexx's second proposition. His perception of the world is simply overly narrow, and he choked it down until it was that way.

UG, admit it - even you have no idea what you type sometimes. you put a bunch of words that sound neat together, throw in a little punctuation for good measure and then "post it" for all eternity.

To whom it may concern: TAUNT is not the same thing as TAUT. Thank you for your time.

My momma taut me to stay away from bad people like you.

Scatologically speaking that is...LOL

Taint? hehehe

It's only a matter of time before someone shoves a flute in their pussy.
This is, afterall, BANNED camp. lol!!!

Is that referring to the verb form of 'reference' or to the stuff about compassionate conservatives?

In English, a verb cannot modify a noun, as far as I can remember.

Isn't it common for the present continuous form of a noun to be used as an adjective? The Running Man? A weeping willow? The swinging sixties?

Or if you don't like that reading, consider treating "visiting rights" as a phrasal noun.

"Visit rights" would be a case of a verb modifying a noun. And it would be horrible. :p

I just dislike writers using a big word when a diminutive one will do. Actually, to me, "visitation" has connotations of spirits/ghosts/gods etc appearing.

Stupid. You can't compare words like that. An apt comparison would be to TUTOR/TUTORED.

"He authored many books" and "He tutored many students" are both perfectly acceptable sentences.


To whom? Others. That's who.

It's a useful idiom. It's a bit cliche, but I think the dangling preposition is what bugs prescriptivists.

These are lovingly referred to as snowclones. They are actually kind of neat if you put some time into studying them.

Did anyone ever use this phrase without a liberal coating of irony? Maybe it's a generational gap...

p.s. I hate these lists.

Or lawyers?

Any native speaker would understand what you were talking about if you said "visiting rights," but I think most would be uncomfortable with it. It doesn't sound natural, like it lies somewhere between "visit rights" and "visitation rights" in it's correctness.

'Running man', 'weeping willow' and 'swinging sixties' would be compound nouns, right?

'The running man' might break down thus (sorry, don't know how to subscript):
((THE)det. (((RUNNING)v)vp ((MAN)n)np)np)np[.subj]

One of the techniques they taught us in my linguistics classes was to use substitution. If you can substitute one word for another without changing the structure of the sentence, then it's likely serving the same functions.

Take your example: "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's visitation rights" and substitute 'running.' It works fine, both mean the pop star's right to do something has been suspended. Try to substitute 'visitation' into 'the running man.' I'm not sure about "the visitation man."

Okay. That's not every enlightening. Maybe paraphrasing will help.

"The running man" == "The man that is running"
"The visitation man" == "The man that visits"
"The visiting man" == "The man that is visiting"

"[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's visitation rights"
== "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's rights to visit [something]"

"[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's visiting rights"
== "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's rights to visit [something]"

"[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's running rights"
== "[Someone] suspended the troubled pop star's rights to run"

Yes, I've officially confused the shit out of myself. There's something going on here that my sleep-deprived brain can't pinpoint...

The phrase 'visiting rights' was used during the process of sorting out my ex's access to our kids. Maybe visitation is more American?

A couple of different dictionaries seem to imply that "visiting" is of an indeterminate length of time, while "visitation" is a single instance of a visit. A "visiting professor," for example, comes for a couple of years, and then leaves, rather than coming back and forth on a regular basis.

But etymology of it notwithstanding, "visitation" is the official legal term in all American custody cases and is almost never used in any other context.