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I edited this question and used "daisy chain" as a verb. I'm wondering if that title is technically grammatically correct.

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Ah - you're from CHAOS! Now I understand the Ψ! – Daniel δ Jul 29 '11 at 14:43
Yup! In the flesh. I'm not a custodian of ELU, though - that's my excellent colleague Lauren Ψ. – Abby T. Miller♦ Jul 29 '11 at 14:49
Many nouns have been verbed. – mgkrebbs Jul 29 '11 at 18:08

4 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

To daisy-chain (preferably with hyphen) means to cascade—output of item 1 feeds into item 2, output of that feeds into item 3, etc. Compound verbs are permitted in English, so yes you can use this one.

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About 1/3 of all the written references in NGrams don't have a hyphen, so your implication that only the hyphenated form is correct seems unnecessarily prescriptive. – FumbleFingers Jul 29 '11 at 14:12
@FumbleFinbers, thanks - edited slightly. – Monica Cellio Jul 29 '11 at 15:02
haha - you retain the prescriptive edge, I see! :) – FumbleFingers Jul 29 '11 at 15:19
I'm not really a prescriptivist, but in this case (as with multi-word adjectives) I find it much easier to parse with the hyphen. And you did say that 2/3 of the NGrams you looked at used it, so it's pretty common. – Monica Cellio Jul 29 '11 at 16:25
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Did your ngrams take into account noun versus verb? – Monica Cellio Dec 21 '11 at 14:06
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up vote 3 down vote

Perfectly valid. "To chain" has been a verb, simply meaning to link in a series, for quite some time, so it's only natural that the related term "daisy-chain" (evoking an image of large "nodes" - flowers - tied together) would follow.

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up vote 5 down vote

Yes, you can daisy chain as a verb (this chart is about 1000 written instances). .

Obviously OP doesn't need a definition, but in case anyone else does...

Originally a daisy chain was simply a garland of plucked daisies, linked together by splitting the stem end of each and threading the next stem through (children often make them from daisies growing in the lawn between mowings).

By metaphorical usage the term has been extended to many "chained" processes or configurations. Particularly, as in OP's case, to the linking of multiple electronic/computer components, each with a "pass-through" socket so the next device can be plugged in to the same shared control wiring.

Metaphorical usages are often (but not always) hyphenated, particularly when using as a verb.

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up vote 4 down vote

Sounds good to me.

I've probably used "daisy chain" as a verb 100 times for every time I've used it as a noun.

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Makes me wonder why it's not in dictionaries as a verb, then. – Daniel δ Jul 29 '11 at 14:04
@drm65 Here, I've found a link for it. (Sorry I edited out the part you responded to, but now I forgot what I said.) – KitFox♦ Jul 29 '11 at 14:07
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@Kit: You could be right, but even so, Dictionary.com should at least link somewhere for the verb form. – Daniel δ Jul 29 '11 at 14:08

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