I read a great post over at Biblical Christianity about verbing nouns (and yes, I just verbed a noun, because the word verb is a noun, Oh look! I did it twice!)
Here are the gems of that post:
The process of verbing nouns is an old one. Many Hebrew verbs are just verbed nouns. You’d just take a noun, and put it in the Pi`el, and voila! (or, more appropriately, hinneh!) A verb is born!
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The maddening thing about English is that if enough people say something stupid long enough, it makes it into a dictionary. But then again, as a man once wisely said (of made-up words), “If you go back far enough, they’re all made up.” True, that.
But sometimes it can be funny when it shouldn’t be. When I was taking prayer requests during a class I taught at Talbot, a brother who was a pastor mentioned that they had had to funeralize several people recently. It made me think of a woman I’d heard on Oprah (no idea how I’d happened on Oprah, so don’t even ask), who mentioned having been “sexualized [i.e. molested in some way] several times.)
So you can verb any noun by simply adding -ize.
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Of course, as I’ve said, my least-favorite very-popular verbed noun is impact, in the sense of have an impact on. My reaction is always the same. It’s properly an intransitive, but it is used as if it were transitive. I dont care if it’s in a dictionary; when someone says, “That (sermon, book, article) really impacted me,” I always say (if alone) “Eww!” Or perhaps, “I’m so sorry.”
Because a wisdom tooth can be impacted; stools, bowels, and colons can be impacted.
But, properly, people aren’t.
Or — merciful heavens — shouldn’t be.
Funny and thought provoking stuff for those of us enamored by language.
Thanks, Kyle, for sharing!
