Some grammar simplified

Yesterday in a doctor's office, I read about some pain management techniques that the brochure said would "subside" my discomfort. Later, I heard a colleague describing how his company had "migrated" all its computers to a new operating system.

But here's a flash. Both migrate and subside are intransitive verbs. In other words, they never have a object. And in even more other words, things subside or migrate all by themselves; you can't subside or migrate them.

So the good doctor's techniques would not subside my pain, but would cause it to subside.

The second example, migrating computers from place to place, is more problematic because the verb itself, besides being intransitive, is just not a good description of the process. It might be better to say something such as, "Our computers are now running all new programs," or "We replaced our operating system with something that's more useful for our purposes."

Those examples are simpler, make more sense, and don't require tortured grammar. And, as Martha would say, those are all good things.