Verbing the noun - A noun by any other name sounds not as sweet

I'm a fan of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories. Wolfe is famously particular about his use of the English language. Also others' use of said language. One thing that peeves him is the use of a noun as a verb, "contact" being singled out for special attention.

Once you've been bitten by the Wolfe bug, it's hard not to notice when people use nouns as verbs. I got the idea for this Web page when I received a message from my boss, and I subsequently posted this request to the Nero Wolfe mailing list:

I was just copied on an e-mail message from my boss, and it includes this snippet (slightly edited to keep me from getting fired):

"Having said that, wouldn't it be extremely important to get the operations people consensing with the {snip} team on the right approach? My concern is that the {snip} team might consens on something that the operations {snip} people think is a bad idea. Your thoughts?"

Yikes! My thoughts are that "consensus" is not a verb, no way Jose! This is so egregious, it puts "contact" to shame. What would Wolfe think? (Well, I guess I know what Wolfe would think.)

I'd like to start keeping a list of real-world misuses of nouns as verbs. If anyone comes across any examples they'd like to contribute, please send them to me at beaglewriter@att.net, along with maybe a short explanation of the context.

I don't know why it fascinates me -- I guess it's like rubbernecking at a fatal car wreck <g>.

These are some of the responses, many sprinkled with their own ironic verbings. If you come across any verbings of note, please send them to me at beaglewriter@att.net. Please include a short explanation of the context. Thanks!

Incested

Yesterday on CNN, a "pro-choice" spokesperson referred to the matter of allowing abortions for women who had been "incested"!

If I hear of anyone else egreging the sacred English language, I'll certainly message you. 8>)

Pluralitized

I once heard someone state that "although we didn't get a majority, the vote was at least 'pluralitized'". If I had Archie's Marley, I would have shot (Marleyized?) him.

Verb a noun, and "I'll NFA that"

Oh, you mean when people decide to verb a noun? (Source: someone of my acquaintance who should have known better, and very shortly thereafter did.) I'm sorry to say that I think of this as "gerundification". My apologies.

I'm afraid the members of the scientific community with whom I work commit this kind of solecism so frequently that I don't even blink an eye when someone says "PCR that sample" (PCR = polymerase chain reaction). Acronyms seem to lend themselves to this kind of bastardized shorthand utterance. Unfortunately I have so little scientific training that I probably don't recognize half the ones that hit my ear. I've even caught myself saying things like "I'll NFA that" (NFA = no further action).

Edwin Newman (may he live forever)

Edwin Newman will be 84 tomorrow (25 Jan 2003 - ed), but this evidences (evidencs? I'm not up on this technique) us that we need him more than ever. I'm sure he would incens over it.

To nonsens it even farther, note that existizing "consens" appearances (appearancs?) "consensus" to be a nounization of the "verb".

Weirds

At 08:46 AM 1/24/2003 -0800, N. Stewart said something remarkably like (but somehow subtly different from):

-- Kevin B. O'Brien TANSTAAFL zwilnik@zwilnik.com "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." -- Mark Twain

Funeralized

A D.C. government employee took the morning off because a friend of hers was being "funeralized".

"Do you know your last name is an adverb?"

Reminds me of one of my favorite movie pick-up lines in a scene in which Marilu Henner sidles up to Michael Keaton at the bar (in "Johnny Dangerously," 1984) and says, "Do you know your last name is an adverb?"

A lesson in English: Verbing the noun

> acquaintance who should have known better, and very shortly thereafter did.)
> I'm sorry to say that I think of this as "gerundification". My apologies.

"Gerundification"? Sorry, indeed! Well may you apologize! Here are H. W. and F. G. Fowler in "The Kings English", Oxford Paperbacks, 1973 (first published 1906) on the gerund:

"A gerund is the verbal noun indentical in form with any participle, simple or compound, that contains the termination _-ing_."

Even if one rejects the Fowlers' strict definition, a gerund is a form of a verb being used as a noun , which is not at all the same thing as a noun being used as a verb. Quite the opposite, in fact.

If "verbing a noun" is not the correct term, it ought to be. The practice is far older than most pedants realize. Here is Sir Ernest Gowers (or perhaps his reviser, Sir Bruce Fraser) in chapter 4 "Correctness" of "The Complete Plain Words", Penguin, 1973 (first published in 1948 as "Plain Words"):

"New verbs are ordinarily formed in one of three ways . . .The first is the simple method of treating a noun as a verb; it is one of the beauties of our language that nouns can be so readily converted into adjectives or verbs. This was the origin, for instance of the verb _question_ [and others such as] _function_, _condition_, _experience_ and _mention_."

Sir Ernest (or Sir Bruce) went on, "The verb _to contact_, described by Sir Alan Herbert many years ago as 'loathsome', has now made its way into the language, perhaps because, as Ivor Brown {finally a mere mortal among the knights - KJ} said, 'there is no other word which covers approach by telephone, letter and speech {not to mention email - KJ}, and _contact_ is self-explanatory and concise'."

I might add that _to verb_ meaning "to form a verb by converting another part of speech" is equally self-explanatory and concise.

Summing up (there's another example), _contacting_ or _about to be contacted_ may be used as participles, which is to say as adjectives but, of the two, only _contacting_ may be used as a gerund, which is to say as a noun. On its own, _contact_, when used as a verb is simply a verb - albeit, as Archie Goodwin has pointed out, either transitive or intransitive.

AKA-ing

Bookended

A two-fer: Incentivized and an illegitimate use of "legitimate" in the same sentence!

Spoken by Pulitzer Prize winner (yikes!) Samantha Power (she should have known better) on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, 7 Apr 2003. "Legitimate" is pronounced so that it rhymes with "regurgitate" (which is about what I did when I heard it), and used to mean "legitimatize" -- a perfectly good word that she could have used in its place:

"How are we going to incentivize people on the inside, standing up and legitimate that way of behaving...."