Does “diligencing” have a history? “Doing diligence” does. Geoffrey Chaucer, advising on that age-old problem of unfriending, wrote: “Whan thou hast for-goon thy freend, do diligence to gete another freend.”

“To diligence” does not seem to have appeared as a verb before, but its relation “to diligent” has. In The Byrth of Mankynde, a book about midwifery, the 16th-century writer Thomas Raynalde said: “Be [the earth] . . . neuer so well diligented and picked, yet always therein will remaine . . . seeds of vnlooked for weeds” – which describes the whole diligencing business pretty accurately.