In a couple of earlier posts (namely this and this) on this blog, it’s been discussed how English words have the tendency to expand from one word class to another. I’d like to explore the same subject a bit further in this post.

Multiple word-class membership is an essential part of the character of the English language, and has been for a very long time. And since nouns and verbs are overwhelmingly the most numerous word classes, it’s not surprising that noun/verbs are particularly common. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for book as a noun is from the late 9th century; the earliest for book as a verb is from 966 (in the sense of ‘to grant or assign land by charter’).

Usually the noun came first and was subsequently verbed, but there are also cases of verbs becoming nouned. Sometimes there was quite a lengthy time lag between the two uses, sometimes not; here are a few more first citation dates from the OED. (Of course you have to bear in mind that a citation doesn’t necessarily represent a widespread usage.)

net: noun 825, verb 1593
drink: noun 888, verb c. 1000
draw: verb 897, noun 1663
word: noun c. 900, verb c. 1205
friend: noun c. 1000, verb 1225
count: noun 1325, verb 1325 (!)
text: noun 1369, verb 1599
twitter: verb 1374, noun 1678
impact: verb 1601, noun 1781
contact: noun 1626, verb 1834

The process of taking a word from one word class and using it in another is called conversion – a poor term, I think, since you don’t actually have to carry out any conversion work on the form of the word. A better term would something like redeployment, perhaps. It affects other word classes, too, besides nouns and verbs:

open: adjective 825, verb c. 900, noun 1624
yellow: adjective c. 700, noun c. 700, verb c. 1050

The word but has, in its long history, been a preposition, adverb, conjunction (of course), noun and verb – most familiarly, perhaps, in no more ifs and buts and But me no buts. (Of course, any word can be used as a noun in this metalinguistic way: “You need to put a the in front of United States.”)

Sharon Creese wrote about verbing: “Some [purists] think it’s a lazy way of creating new words”. I’d prefer to say that it’s an economical way of extending the functionality of the language without needing to creating new words.

In his book Lexical Priming (Routledge 2005), which is an important book and an enthralling read, Michael Hoey casts doubt on the a priori existence of word classes, suggesting that terms such as noun and verb are only labels that make generalisations from the behaviour of words and phrases, and which fit some words better than others.

Apart from anything else, all this is potentially good news for learners of English, who can use lexical redeployment as a communication strategy, to compensate for lack of knowledge. For instance, if you want to tell someone that on a certain occasion you were knitting a jumper, but you don’t know the word knit, you might say I was jumpering. If it’s a face to face conversation and you can support what you say by miming, you’ll certainly get your meaning across; otherwise, you might or you might not, but it’s always worth trying (or worth a try).

It can cause problems in reading, though, and for native speakers too, especially in news headlines, as Michael Rundell wrote. He quoted the classic example Foot heads arms body. Interpreting this requires quite a bit of lexical and grammatical knowledge, plus the ability to recognise Foot as the surname of a politician. You also need to read it with your ears as well as your eyes – to hear it with the right rhythm and stress – otherwise it remains a perplexing horizontal list of four words.

I was recently in Whitby, a town on the Yorkshire coast which is, among other things, a fishing port. While I was trawling through the local newspaper one day, the following things happened in the space of a split second:

1 I spotted the first line of a headline: Quiet night in nets
2 I conjured up a half-formed image of a calm moonlit sea, fishermen twiddling their thumbs as they wait for the fish to swim into their nets …
3 I read the second line of the headline: pensioner £290,000.
4 I hurriedly recategorised nets as a verb, not a noun, and heard the headline in my head the way I needed to: Quiet night in / nets pensioner £290,000 – the layout in the newspaper militates against this division into phrases. (The lucky pensioner in question had won that sum of money in some sort of TV phone-in game show, after a last-minute decision to stay at home instead of going out somewhere.)

And it’s not only headlines that can mislead readers in this way. This is from a Guardian article about historian Hugh Trevor-Roper:

“… over and over again, the stakes rising at each new turn of the wheel, the overconfidence engendered (at least in part) by his prodigious talents led him to court, …”
– to the courtroom, then, to fight legal battles? No, the text continues like this:
“… over and over again, the stakes rising at each new turn of the wheel, the overconfidence engendered (at least in part) by his prodigious talents led him to court, and eventually to encounter, disaster.”

Well, I’m shocked (I’m in a state of shock) to see how long this post has grown. Time to halt (time to call a halt). Finally, though, here’s another memento from Yorkshire, a sign by the roadside at the exit from a quarry in the Yorkshire Dales, reminding lorry drivers to secure their load of stone (the stone they’ve loaded) before setting off on their journey: Have you sheeted?

(sheet: noun 725, verb 1606: when Snow the Pasture sheets – Shakespeare, no less!)

Some people get very upset about nouns being used as verbs. A recent row in the press centred on the verbal use of medal (How many of their athletes were medalled at the last Olympics?) but it turns out that this usage is at least as old as Thackeray. Which is hardly surprising, since forming verbs from nouns is as standard a word-formation rule in English as you could possibly find – as anyone would know who had ever banked a cheque (or initialled a mistake on it), breakfasted in the garden, or texted a friend. What seems to cause special annoyance is the application of this rule in business jargon – as when someone tasks a colleague to action a proposal, or something impacts a decision (e.g. here, where this is described as a ‘grammar error’).

What gets less attention is a similar development where nouns are recycled as adjectives. Again, the business community is a prime ‘offender’, with its fondness for the adjectival uses of key (key personnel) and core (core competencies). Of course, nouns regularly function in an adjective-like way when modifying other nouns (think of school uniform or winter coat), but to make the transition (or, as some would say, to transition) from noun to adjective they need to be used in expressions like this:

In the telecoms sector, where new data services have been driven by technical capabilities rather than customer demand, this is particularly key.
Design is absolutely core to building on the area’s heritage and strengths.

Younger speakers, while immune to the fashions of business jargon, have their own favourite noun-like adjectives: rubbish is now well-established as an adjective (that is such a rubbish haircut), while quality has also made the leap from noun-modifier (a quality product) to full-blown adjective(the decor is so quality: the materials, the carpeting everything). My current favourite is genius, now hovering on the brink of adjective-hood (the bonus track is an absolutely genius cover of the Pixies “Where Is My Mind?”).

Does it matter? It’s true there’s an element of fashion and group conformity in the way some people use language, but on the whole the new usages are not created simply in order to annoy the language police: they arise because there is a gap in the language that needs filling. It is not, as some would have it, “lazy English” to say: “OK, who’s going to action this?” (instead of asking: “Who is going to take responsibility for ensuring that this plan is carried out?”). It is simpler, quicker, and probably clearer. Calling this kind of thing a “grammar error” is to attack the wrong target. The problem with the kind of jargon used in business and government is when it is deliberately used to disguise the fact that the speaker is incapable of having an original thought, or worse (as Orwell realized long ago) to conceal the speaker’s true, and more sinister, meaning under a fluffy cloud of clichés.

Read other posts about things people say that I hate.