"she's atheist!"

[Ruminating Skeptic]

So this something that has been bothering me for a while. I have told my friends I'm an atheist, then when they tell an adult they say "she's atheist". scream Why do people somehow think atheism is a verb? Everytime they do this, I tell them to learn the english language.

Anyone else have this problem? And is anyone else driven crazy by it?

peace out,
momo.  

[Fourscarf]

Maybe they just choose to omit the "an" in that context. I don't think they're using it as a verb.  

[ProjectOmicron88]

I always assumed it's used that way as an adjective. "He's Christian", "She's Muslim", "He's atheist", etc. It works the same if I said, "He's apolitical".  

[Habible]

The "is" is the verb actually, atheist is an adjective ninja  

[Dirty Dirty Shisno]

I'm not annoyed by this at all. It couldn't bug me less. It's wrong but compared to some of the wrong s**t that happens in my life this could NOT be less important to me.  

[Prince Rilian]

Based on its position in the sentence, it could be a present participle, but present participles in English have -ing at the end, so it would be, "She's atheisting."

It could also be an adjective, a predicate adjective, but -ist isn't an ending for adjectives in English, so to be an adjective, it would have to be "atheistic", as in, "She's atheistic."

Since 'to atheist' is indeed not a verb, only the second would make sense.

However, if you look to other languages, such as French, German, and Spanish, you'll see that, with nouns of religion, profession, and national origin (and perhaps others), the article a/an/one is omitted, and the noun is treated as an adjective for declension purposes. In Romaninan, "Este ziarista" means "he is a journalist", I think. Both the subject pronoun and the indefinite article are omitted, though I think the former is an optional omission, whereas the latter is required.

So, while it is understandable, by analogy to other languages, to omit the indefinite article, it is not correct in English. Thus the correct wording would be either, "She's atheistic," or, "She's an atheist."

And the word atheistic might include people who are just non-religious, but not self-labeled as atheists, so, really, the only correct wording is, "She's an atheist."  

[=X-Sparker + AquaKiller=]

Uhhh, actually I think YOU are the one who needs to learn the English language over again.

"She's atheist."

Subject: She
Verb: is (in the form of 's)
Noun: Atheist

You're wrong in thinking that they are using atheist as a verb. They are not. They are using the correct verb "is", but they are missing an "an" before "atheist". Or they can change the noun to an adjective by saying "atheistic" instead of "atheist", and that would make it a complete sentence.

Incorrect:
"She's atheist."

Correct:
"She's an atheist."
"She's atheistic."


No offense in any way.  

[Dathu]

xd So then is "I'm Atheist" wrong, because I say that ALL the time.  

[Matthias Swan]

I don't think people do this on purpose.
And at the end, the message is recieved, y'know? So it's a very small issue.