Are You Good at Verbing?
2025年10月14日
When people are asked about what they are good at, they often reply with answers such as cooking, playing the piano, dancing or taking pictures. But verbing, that is something I have never heard someone say that they are good at. Could it be they just don’t know what verbing is?
In a single work day, we might head a meeting, eye an opportunity, nose around for good ideas, mouth a greeting, elbow an opponent, strong-arm a colleague, shoulder the blame, stomach a loss, and finally hand in our resignation. What we’re doing with all those body parts is called verbing or verbification–using nouns (or occasionally other parts of speech) as verbs. Verbing often comes about when a noun becomes associated with an action and then subsequently becomes a verb. A modern example is Google. It began as the name of a company/product, and as it was widely used and associated with an action, it became a verb. I imagine that you have googled something in the past week or so. In English there are many words that are both nouns and verbs. Here are some.
- address: I addressed the group about writing an address.
- balloon: His stomach ballooned after eating the balloon.
- beef: The beef producer beefed about the cost of beefing up security.
- cake: She cakes her cakes with chocolate cream.
- cloud: Thoughts of clouds cloud my mind.
- dress: They dressed their daughter in a dress.
- duck: Will the duck duck when it walks under the fence?
ice: He iced his hurt ankle with ice.
- jam: I jammed my finger when I made jam.
- milk: They milk cows and sell the milk.
- note: Please note the note on the door.
- oil: He uses oil to oil his bicycle.
- pen: The author will pen the novel with a red pen.
- question: The teacher questioned the students with many difficult questions.
- sandwich: She wondered how he would eat her sandwich when she found herself sandwiched between the two large men.
- stamp: The post office stamps stamps with the date the mail is sent.
voice: She speaks in a very soft voice when she voices her complaints.
- winter: The retired couple likes to winter in Okinawa during winter.