A Nathan Pyle (of Strange Planet) cartoon passed on by Jeff Shaumeyer on Facebook yesterday:
(#1) JS: This is my reaction every time I use my credit card. I crave the validation.
A pun on validation; on the base verb, from NOAD, with just the two relevant senses pulled out — a, the sense of the card machine; and d, the sense of the user in the cartoon:
verb validate: [with object] [a] check or prove the validity or accuracy of (something): these estimates have been validated by periodic surveys. … [d] recognize or affirm the validity or worth of (a person or their feelings or opinions); cause (a person) to feel valued or worthwhile: without Patti to validate my feelings, they seemed not to exist | he seems to need other women’s attention to validate him as a man.
We’ve been here before, in my 2/7/21 posting “The bull validates Peter’s family”, in #2 there, a Bizarro cartoon with another validate pun, involving sense d above, in combination with a complex variant of sense a, the sense in to validate parking:
(#2) A validating Bizarro from 2012
April 28, 2021 at 1:15 pm |
I’ve always preferred to think of my credit card (or, more strictly, the transaction) as being approved, so, if I’m lucky, I can be both approved and validated in one shopping excursion. More seriously, I think the two words have different meanings: the business validates my parking ticket to show that I did, in fact, buy something at the store of enough value to grant me free or reduced-rate parking. The validation is authoritative information from entity A (the store) for use by entity B (the parking facility) that something it true. Credit-card approval is for immediate use only and has no future value.