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| photo credits: Oxford University Press |
In this article, Jon Hird, author of
the brand new Oxford Learner’s Pocket Verbs and Tenses, takes a look at the
verbing of English and shares with us some interesting examples he has recently
come across.
A recent OUP ELT blog about the
language legacy of the Olympics (which we'll look at tomorrow) included some examples of nouns being used as
verbs. Competitors no longer stood on the podium and won a medal, but podiumed
and medalled. Athletes also finalled (reached a final) and PB-ed (achieved a
PB, or Personal Best). Even Lord Coe, Chairman of the Organising Committee, got
in on the act when, prior to the games, he told the nation that ‘The London
Olympics need[ed] to legacy’.
This conversion of nouns to verbs is
known as ‘verbing’ and it has been around for as long as the English language
itself. Ancient verbs such as rain and thunder and more recent conversions such
as access, chair, debut, highlight and impact were all originally used only as
nouns before they became verbs. In his book, The Language Instinct, Steven
Pinker tells us that ‘Easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of
English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that makes English
English.’
Verbing exists essentially to make
what we say shorter and snappier. It can also give a more dynamic sense to ideas.
Conversion is easy and therefore common in English because, unlike in many
other languages, the base form of the verb does not take a separate ending.
Verbs converted from nouns are all regular and the past forms have an -ed
ending.
Today, noun to verb conversion is
particularly common in the field of technology, especially when it comes to the
internet and digital communication. Many words which were originally nouns have
very quickly become established as verbs. We bookmark websites. We email, text,
message and DM (Direct Message) people. We friend and unfriend (or defriend)
people on Facebook. We tweet about topics that are trending. We blog. And now,
at least according to one mobile phone provider, we also hub.
Proper nouns are also used as verbs.
If we don’t know something, we google it. We skype to keep in touch. We youtube
to watch video clips. And we facebook and whatsapp people about what’s going
on. A Turkish colleague of mine recently found himself saying that he’d ebayed
something and was wondering if it’s OK to say that.
Outside the world of technology, it
seems that nouns are being verbed wherever you turn. At the airport on a recent
work trip, we were informed that ‘Passengers who are transiting need to follow
the transit signs.’ After my return to the UK, a colleague emailed ‘I hope you
had a great time conferencing around Italy.’ Around the same time a friend
facebooked ‘let’s coffee soon!’ I’ve since discovered that ‘Let’s Coffee’ is
the name of numerous coffee shops around the world. There’s also ‘Let’s
Burger’, ‘Let’s Seafood’ and no doubt many more.
Food and drink, in fact, seems to be
ripe when it comes to verbing the noun. Ted, a character in the TV show ‘How I
Met Your Mother’, when offering to buy someone a drink, asks ‘Can I beer you?’
After a talk I recently gave, one of the participants facebooked me this photo
he had taken of a London café window (see below). Whether he saladed or
sandwiched that day, I’m not sure. And while a considerable number of English
words connected with food come from French, I was surprised to come across the
concept of fooding in, of all places, Montmartre in Paris.
So, the
choice is yours – do you noun or do you verb? Keep your eyes and ears open and
see how many examples of verbing you come across. A lot, I suspect.
By OUP, English Language Teaching Global Blog (slightly abridged)
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