#verbing

[prokopetz]

Verbing is awsome in general, but it's especially fun to do with complicated jargon. Obviously the verb form of "telekinesis" is "to telekinese". Why wouldn't it be? Hold on, I need the clairvoyant to clairvoy something for me.

[ub-sessed]

Someday I'm going to start making a list of English verbs that started their existence in English as nouns and what year they crossed over.

I was going to start with impact, but it turns out it's been a verb (c. 1600) for longer than it's been a noun (1738), although the current usage is from 1935, so now I don't know what to think. I suspect there's a pronunciation difference? Impact vs. impact.

[ralkana]

On the subject of tumblr speak, I had to read this clue several times to realize that this means "something that is paid to the government" instead of "someone that is paid to do governmenting".

[superbeans89]

[locutus-sum]

Reason one billion and five to love Cicero: he made up the verb ‘to Sulla’.

If they made my name into a verb I don’t like to thing what it would mean. Probably ‘to make a total mess of literally everything one touches’.

[lexicon-decepticon]

Google-imaged (v.)

“I google-imaged it for reference. Google-imaged it?”

Similar to my first post, I witnessed an instance of someone turning a noun phrase into a past tense verb by adding the suffix -ed. In a youtube video, an artist explained how she was drawing an object incorrectly until she “google-imaged it.” Realizing how interesting her word creation was, she actually repeated it incredulously! The definition of this word is, of course, searching for an image on google.

[ahdictionary]

Functional shift again

In a post several years ago, we discussed the phenomenon of functional shift, the process in which words belonging to one part of speech are repurposed as other parts of speech. That post primarily focused on the “verbing” of nouns, as when the noun contact begat the verb contact, but functional shift can follow countless other paths.

For instance, a noun can take on a new life as an adjective, as happened to the nouns legion and myriad, both of which originally referred to a large number of people—a legion was a Roman military unit of 3,000 to 6,000 troops, while myriad meant  “a group of 10,000, especially 10,000 troops.” Both words are now often used adjectivally to mean “very numerous,” as in The problems facing the new Middle East peace plan are legion or The speaker described the myriad difficulties of earning approval for a new vaccine.

Verbs can turn into adjectives too, as when the verb spare (spare a dime) became the adjective spare (a spare tire). Or they can turn into nouns, as when the verb kill (killed the deer) became the noun kill (skinned and butchered his kill) many centuries ago, or more recently when the verb reveal (revealed my new look) gave rise to the noun reveal (a shocking reveal in the show’s season finale).

Adjectives, for their part, can become nouns (My bad!) or verbs (attempted to better her situation) or, in a pinch, adverbs (Do not go gentle into that good night!). Adverbs  can become nouns (the great hereafter), and prepositions can become nouns (have an in at the company) or verbs (offed a rival mob boss). Both conjunctions and interjections can be redeployed as nouns as well (no ifs, ands, or buts; said our goodbyes).

Speaking of interjections, they can be formed out of almost any other part of speech. They can be nouns (Rats!), verbs (Damn!), adjectives (Cool!), adverbs (Well!), or conjunctions (As if!). Could even a preposition be used as an interjection? If it hasn’t happened yet, there’s no reason why it couldn’t at some point in the future…

Thank you for visiting the American Heritage Dictionary at ahdictionary.com!

[ambientwhispers]

Truthing here for you