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Question for the week
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Posted: 08/10/04 The English language has a certain chicken-or-the-egg factor about it. Only it’s called the-noun-or-the-verb. And it’s all about words that begin life in one category but end up being used in the other. Often we don’t know which came first. I believe languages are living, changing things, so I’m not advocating that we never create another verb from a noun or vice versa. Rather, I’m nominating – since it is an election year – the following nouns for verb status. The word ‘back burner’ is in my current Webster’s Unabridged as a noun meaning “a condition of low priority.” But here are some ways to make it a verb: I plan to back burner watching the presidential debates. The candidates back burnered any serious conversation on the issues. We must back burner the proposed increase in taxes. Of course, it doesn’t need to have only a political bent. I’ve back burnered weeding my garden for days. Then there’s ‘curmudgeon,’ which means “a bad tempered, difficult or cantankerous person.” Does such a person curmudge? Do right wing talk show hosts and left wing pundits also curmudge? Might Shakespeare have suggested that “He doth curmudge too much?” ‘Sledgehammer’ is already in the dictionary as a verb, but only when it refers to the activity involved in using a real sledgehammer. I think we can broaden this definition to include theoretical sledgehammers too. For instance, the commercials on television sledgehammer me during every program. As you can see, I’m potentialing many changes for the next edition of Webster’s.
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