“Verbing weirds language.” — “Calvin and Hobbs” creator Bill Watterston
Just before arriving at the above conclusion, Calvin explains to his friend Hobbs that “I like to verb words. I take nouns and adjectives” he explains, “and use them as verbs. Remember when ‘access’ was a thing? Now it’s something you do. It got verbed.” (Interestingly, using “verb” as a verb makes it an autological word, or one that refers to itself.)
As you’d expect, “to verb” also has a corresponding noun: “verbification.” When you say “to verb,” you’re basically referring to verbification that does not involve a change in the word’s form. You know, words including: walk, sleep, talk, drink and dress, they’re all words that probably started out as nouns but are now also verbs — and there are thousands of them. The fancy name for these unchanged words is “anthimeria.”
According to Merriam-Webster, verbification is simply “The act of making into a verb.” According to language maven William Safire, verbification is a way to save space by, for example, telling investors they can “status” their transfer requests, instead of having to say “learn the status of.”
Some verbifications (such as “chair” and “host”) are generally accepted by linguists. Others, not so much. Verbifications like “to access” and “to impact” are still considered lazy writing by many people. The Associated Press Stylebook even goes as far as stating that an author can write a book, but a writer can’t “author” a book. (And I hate it when big companies try to “incentivize” me to purchase something.)
Some other verbings I’ve recently heard people grumble about are: charities urging us to “gift” some money (or even a car!) to them, and political groups telling us that we could “impact” an upcoming election if we would only give them our time and money.
On a much smaller level, there’s the incident involving University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, who, in 2007, famously implored a security guard, “Don’t tase me, bro!” Maybe he didn’t have enough time to yell, “Don’t use your Taser on me, bro!” But it doesn’t matter anyway since history is on his side; in his haste, he probably verbified correctly.
Supporting evidence for the acceptability of Meyer’s plea includes another acronymically named device, the laser (light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation), which was being put into use in 1966. Back then, the scientists who were using it evidently agreed that the correct verb to describe the act of zapping something with a laser beam was “lase.”
Of course, ‘60s scientists were far from the first ones to discover verbification, which can be traced back to the days before Shakespeare, who also made use of them. A couple examples of the Bard’s usage are: “I eared her language” and “He words me.”
Such verbifications are also linguistic conversions (also known as “zero derivations” or “functional shifts,” in case this stuff wasn’t confusing enough already). What that means is that words that used to be verbs can also turn into nouns, all without changing their spelling. Yes, nounification. In fact it’s difficult to figure out which came first, the verb or the noun, when using words including: “call,” “alert,” “command,” “fear,” “feel,” “hope,” “run,” “sleep,” and so on.
So, are verbifications and their ilk genuine evolutions of language or are they yet another slippery slope to lazy writing? If you subscribe to this warning from author Peter Ellis, the future looks grim indeed: “First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns and I speech nothing because I no verbs.”
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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