I Hate This Word! I Hate This Word!! I HATE This Word!!!

I picked Color Spray as today's fractal because every time I hear my new "hate" word I want to let out a "technicolor yawn" (which for those of you who not in the know is "Ozzie" slang for vomiting--'cause that's what I want to do every time I hear this word). What's the word that has my knickers in a twist? Read on!
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There's a newly-coined word that is somehow gaining currency in our language and, like I said in the title--I hate this word! I hate this word!! I hate this word!!! And what word is it that I hate with such vehemence I hear you cry (Surely someone, somewhere wants to know--or you wouldn't be reading this blog, would you?) The new word that has my "knickers in a twist" is EFFORTING. I've heard it used a few times here and there before but I've heard it now fewer than four times in the past week. Newscasters (who really should know better--or at least their writers should) here in L.A. at least have coopted it as the word du jour: still, each time I hear it the word just annoys me more with each passing utterance.
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Dictionary.com defines effort as a NOUN which can mean one of several things: 1) exertion of physical or mental power 2) an earnest or strenuous attempt 3) something done by exertion or hard work. (There are four additional definitions listed but none of them relate to the way "efforting" is currently being used as in--city officials are EFFORTING to organize the parade.) Nowhere in the dictionary is there a definition for "effort" as a verb.
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"Efforting" is one of the growing number of words where lazy speakers try to turn passive nouns into active verbs simply by adding a suffix ("ing" and "ed" among others.) Why this is necessary (or particularly desirable) is beyond me: still, this word has begun to creep into our conversation and if its not stopped the word will one day become completely acceptable. Part of me realizes that adaptation and change is the very nature of the English language (and that characteristic has helped the language flourish) but another (much larger part ) chafes against the inelegance and downright awkwardness of the word. Worse yet--what's the point of even inventing a word like "efforting" when we already have words like "trying" and "attempting" which fill the definition quite nicely? Honestly, I don't get it...
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Who's responsible for this? Honestly I don't know but if I had to point fingers I'd say it started with Academics who decided to pump up their feelings of self-aggrandisement by dropping in three fifty dollar words where a single five dollar (or even a two-dollar) word would suffice. (My favorite example was a Professor at S.D.S.U. (whose name I have thankfully forgotten) who said "A is NOT UNLIKE B." I responded "so A is LIKE B" only to be told that no the correct terminology was "not unlike" since the difference was in the gradation... What that difference is I still don't know to this day.) From here it spread to bureaucrats who turned City Dumps into "refuse storage facilities" and marketing professionals who made "used cars" and "used clothes" into "pre-owned autos" and "vintage collectibles." among other linguistic crimes. Come on people! What's wrong with calling a thing what it is in simple terms?
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It's actually kind of funny that I'd be writing this post at all: I hated "sentence diagramming" in Language classes in school: I thought it was pointless since I had a pretty good vocabulary and instinctively knew how to use it. (It's a gift you get from reading a lot.) I never really understood the purpose of studying language structure and why all those "parts of speech" and the many different "linguistic cases" are important. Without a basic foundation in these things words like "efforting" creep into our vocabulary--and that's just sad.
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'nuff said.