English has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and has swum a sea of troubles to become the most international language in the world. Still, the language floats uneasily alongside its supposed grammatical rules, refusing to be subjugated by them and forever on the brink of a grammatical abyss. The conversion of nouns to verbs is just one of those contentious issues.
Defining the Issue
The number of terms for converting nouns to verbs is almost as plentiful as the number of converted words. Do we verb, verbify, zero derivate, verbalize or anthimeriate our nouns?
First, cut verbalize, it is a confusion between verb and verbal. Although both come from the Latin word verbum meaning word, they have moved apart since their import from French; much in the same way as chalet, chateaux and castle. Yes, it is possible to make the point that the meanings of words shift, just look at nice’s journey from being worse than the c-word to a compliment and to its present state of being slightly sarcastic.
Anthimeriate is an anthimeriation of the noun anthimeria. It is of Greek origin and its constituent parts mean “opposite part.” In rhetoric it has come to mean the use of nouns as verbs. Meanwhile Zero Derivation is another technical term for the conversion of nouns to verbs, but is even more unwieldy than anthimeria.
Using verb as a verb leads to the catch-all term, verbing. It makes natural sense in an English kind of way to use the term for a verb as a verb. The noun may be verbed, converting them is verbing, the conversion of a verb is verbification and maybe you will feel the need to verbify your nouns.
Verbing in Action
Verbing has a long tradition in English. Some good examples of the trend come from William Shakespeare. For example, “I’ll unhair they head” from Antony and Cleopatra. In Richard III he made both grace and uncle into verbs. He is also wrongly accredited with saying “but me no buts.” In fact, the term was invented by Susanna Centlivre in the play, The Busie Body in 1709.
As Rolly Sussex, an Australian professor, notes that many nouns can be converted into verbs. He specifically notes how almost any garden tool can be verbed. You shovel with a shovel and trowel with a trowel. However, many nouns are converted, but just as many are not. Plants are watered but are not sunned. Toast is buttered but never margarined. He notes many words are a matter of taste; showing distaste for actioning, leveraging and to beer someone up.
A modern example of verbing is the conversion of the word taser. The verb for being hit by a taser is to be zapped. However, the word taser has been verbed just as brand names such as Hoover and Xerox have. Sometimes two forms come from the same word. Andrew Meyer said “don’t tase me bro” when about to be zapped during a John Kerry speech in Florida. The more popular form of the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is to taser. So Meyer was not tased, he was merely tasered.
Creative or Abhorrent?
Does verbing, as Calvin & Hobbes put it, weird language? That is to say, does the coining of new uses for old words make a language ugly? Many purists seem to believe so. Benjamin Zimmer points to general mumbling about athletes hoping to medal or podium at the Olympics as evidence of a “general predisposition against innovative verbing.”
Many wrongly believe it to be a recent phenomenon created by youth culture. As established earlier, Shakespeare coined a few of his own in the 16th century and there were no doubt many before. The term verbification itself dates back to 1871. Medal was first used as verb in 1822 and podium by skier Kristie Marshall in 1992.
Another perception is that verbing is lazy writing. However, many people point out that English has always been a highly creative language. Many have and will also argue that it keeps English as a dynamic language, which rebels against grammatical strictures that are often imported from Latin (split infinitives spring to mind). They will argue verbing keeps English close to chaos; right where it should be. Henry Alford summed this thought up way back in 1870 when he wrote that verbing is “one of the most obvious means of enriching” English.
Conclusion
Whatever you might call it; the conversion of nouns into verbs appears to be a matter of taste. This would explain why some verbed words are acceptable like to butter, but many others like to margarine are not. As with many parts of English there are plenty of alternatives for English speakers to use. Someone can butter their bread or spread butter on their bread; their choice. However, the verbing of words is a linguistic form of Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory, the strongest verbings will survive and the weakest will not. This is what makes the English language so broad and exciting; it has near limitless creativity and openness. It would be a shame to lose this verbal dexterity.
Resources:
Alford, Henry, 1870, The Queen’s English
Burton, Gideon O, Silva Rhetoricae, Brigham Young University (link)
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, (Link)
Sussex, Rolly, A word in your ear: verbification, zero derivation, or conversion, ABC Radio (link)
Mark Wollacott - Mark Wollacott is a thirty year old Brit from the Cotswolds. He began writing in 2000 when press-ganged into writing a play for the ...
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