Verbification
Verbification, or
verbing, is the creation of a
verb from a
noun,
adjective, or other word. Verbification is a form of
derivation, and may involve any of the various derivational processes. In English, verbification typically involves either the addition of an
affix such as
-ize,
-ify, or
en-, or the simple
conversion of a non-verb to a verb. The verbs
to verbify and
to verb are themselves products of verbification, and â€" as might be guessed â€" the term
to verb is often used more specifically, to refer only to verbification that does not involve a change in
form. However, neither term is in general technical use; in discussing
word formation, linguists commonly use terms that describe the process of formation (such as
coining or
suffixation) rather than the lexical category of the new word.
Verbification may have a bad reputation with some English users because it is such a potent source of
neologisms. Although most products of verbification are regarded as neologisms, and may meet considerable opposition from
prescriptivist authorities, they are extremely common in
colloquial speech, particularly specialized
jargon, where words are needed to describe common actions or experiences.
Verbification is by no means confined to
argot, and has furnished
English with countless new expressions, e.g. "access", as in "access the file", which was previously a noun, as in "gain access to the file". Similar mainstream examples include "host", as in "host a party", and "chair", as in "chair the meeting". Other formations, such as "gift", are less widespread but nevertheless mainstream. Examples of verbification in the
English language number in the thousands, including some of the most common words, such as
mail and
e-mail,
strike,
talk,
salt,
pepper,
switch,
bed,
sleep,
ship,
train,
stop,
drink,
cup,
lure,
mutter,
dress,
dizzy,
divorce,
fool,
merge, and many more, to be found on virtually every page in the
dictionary. Often it is impossible to tell which form arose first. Note all the examples in this paragraph involve the process of Conversion / "zero derivation".
Some verbifications take the form of
back-formations. For example, "enthusiasm" has been verbified into "enthuse". This kind of formation was used even by
Shakespeare, who wrote in
Hamlet of a
star "[making] his course to
illume that part of heaven".
Verbification is sometimes used to create
nonce words or joking words. Sometimes these jocular constructions gain favor and become used in serious discourse, due to a subtle shade of meaning which is present in the neologism but absent from similar standard verbs, e.g.
speechify. In other cases, simple
conversion is involved, as with formations like
beer, as in
beer me ("give me a beer") and
eye, as in
eye it ("look at it"). Sometimes, a verbified form requires an adverb, e.g.
sex as in
sex it up ("make it sexier").
In other languages, such as
Japanese and the
Semitic languages, verbification is a more regular process. In
Esperanto, any word can be transformed into a verb, either by altering its ending to
-i, or by applying suffixes such as
-igi and
-iÄi.
A
Calvin and Hobbes strip dealt with this phenomenon, concluding with the statement that "Verbing weirds language."
*
"Grammar Puss" by Steven Pinker
*
Figures of Speech
