When I was in London this weekend I heard the word dep being used by a singer who was standing in for another in a singing group. I hadn’t come across this word before and assumed it was an abbreviation of deputy.
According to this article, that’s exactly what it is – “in the music biz it means a stand-in, a musician who takes the place of a regular band member – usually when they’ve fallen ill … or more likely got a better paid gig on.”
Have you come across this usage?
The process here is interesting though…
It is Deputy, abbreviated to “dep” and then “dep” is taken as a verb alone and we can add -ing to it??
I didn’t hear it used as a verb, but it could be used that way with -ing. The verb deputise / deputize exists as well, but that would be far too long 🙂
When I read the title of this post, I assumed the words were:
deps ‘depression’ (“to have the deps”)
to dep ‘to be depressed’.
In Finnish there is a word “depis” which means ‘depression’ (only the psychological meaning). The “is” in the end is a derivational ending borrowed from Swedish.