People verb nouns all the time… Especially American people who seem to trial them all the time. Such linguistic innovations always drag themselves onto these Britannic shores eventually. And I suspect we are hardly innocent ourselves though it’s dreadfully hard to tell who is really to blame in the age of the internet.
Anyway, most of these new verbs are based on common nouns rather than proper nouns. Apparently there are very few names which have been verbed.
No, this is the rules of the game. There are two categories: Verbs based upon people and places and such which have hit the pages of the OED and those that haven’t.
“Hoover” as in to vacuum clean is in the OED so that is an example of the former. The later would undoubtedly include “fisk” as in to… Well you all know what that means but I doubt Ms Dent of “Dictionary Corner” would approve. An aside: you can just tell that under that cool, lexicographical exterior she’s a right filthy goer.
Anyway, one cold shower and a tap on the herman jelmet with a cold spoon by matron later… Any readers got examples of verbed proper nouns?
I will accept examples in languages other than English.
PS I assume the word “verb” is a noun and therefore “to verb” is an example of creating a verb out of a noun which is quite cute in the same way TLA is a three letter acronym. I am now heading for the shallow-end because linguistics is not my field at all and I fear making a complete tit of myself.
To google: which is what I immediately did with the phrase ‘verbed proper nouns.’ It came up with ‘xerox’, but not much else.
Back in the eighties, The Economist referred to companies that had been squeezed into bankruptcy by tight budgets and high interest rates as having been “thatchered”.
But it didn’t outlast the era, so I suppose it doesn’t count.
“Browned-off”, onthe other hand, should be revived.
The bloggers favourite “to fisk” of course.
Off to think of more.
Isn’t great how our language expands.
New words and new ways to share ideas are good.
Ask some teenagers, I’m sure they do it best. I won’t see any till next week though, I’ll try to remember some they use.
‘to roger’ just sprang to mind for some reason. Don’t know who the original Roger was, though.
As usual, Bill Shakes got there first. Hamlet, asking the First Player to temper his over-emotional performance:
“It out-herods Herod; pray you, avoid it.”
The verbing of nouns has been going on for centuries. It is one of the beautiful flexibilities of our language, and the Americans certainly didn’t invent it.
Slightly off-topic, but it reminds me of the brilliant quote by Peter Ellis:
“First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.”
Sorry, can’t think of any more except “to boycott someone”. After Captain Boycott, who was the first victim.
Lynching after William Lynch and his Lynch Law
Poss. Gerrymandering a contraction of Elbridge Gerry and Salamander
Vandalise - From The Vandals
I’m fairly sure Gerrymander is one and bravo Pavlov! There must be more based on nationalities or tribes or whatever. Oh, yeah, “amok”.
I have no idea about rogering. I would suspect it’s a corruption. And we are very good at that…
“Garkon, donny mo les horses doofers, sliver plate” - Gary Broadhead, third year French, Ryton Comp. I dunno what Gary went on to do but it sure as hell wasn’t working the simultaneous translation at the UN. I know this because there hasn’t been a nuclear war. He also used to say “murky bucket”.
In the late ’80s-early ’90s Panasonic made a brave stab at spreading “panafax” as an alternative to “fax”. It failed.
And the must be some sporting and military ones.
There is of course in Chilean Spanish, “davilla” after a metals trader who lost 0.5% of the countries GDP by accident. It means to screw something-up epically.
I thought of Amok, but there was no actual tribe, it’s from the Malay word amuk meaning ‘mad with rage’
ah got another one
bowdlerise - To censor by expurgation after Thomas Bowdler who published a complete works of Shakespeare with all the what he considered ‘dirty’ bits cut out.
two more, and now my head hurts
mesmerise - After I think Anton? Mesmer
and
galvanise - After Luigi Galvani
two possibly dodgy ones, they may be adjectives
to guillotine - after it’s inventor
to sandwich - after the Earl
Pavlov you are on fire! Yup on Anton Mesmer, Galvani and Guillotine. Great stuff.
As to Bowdler… One of Lewis Carroll’s unfinished (unstarted?) projects was to produce a “girl’s Shakespeare” and his intention was to “out-bowdler Bowdler”. God knows what would have been left.
But then to give Carroll his due (both my wife and I are horrendous Carrollians). She’s even read not just Sylvie and Bruno but his works on logic. He is the most quoted source in the language after Shakespeare and the KJV.
From the US shore, “bork” is reasonably widely used here.
If you aceept the -ize suffix, the list gets too long.
I can think of balkanize, pasteurize, vulcanize, tantalize, stalinize, leninize (”Whereas Gramsci had sought to Leninize the party, Togliatti wanted to Stalinize it.”).
There are quite a few that are a judgment call: catholicize, latinize, anglicize, americanize, romanize, italicize, etc.
There are also rarely used ones, like platonize or burke.
And then there is [giggle] sodomize.
An older counterpart to Fisking - Pilgering. Apparently coined by Auberon Waugh.
On the subject of La Dent - has anyone else noticed that whenever Richard Whitely spotted “Tribade”, she used to blush, but she now makes a point of mentioning it herself?
Utterly filthy, I reckon…
I’m glad you mentioned that. I’d been meaning to write something along these lines.
The beauty of “to verb” is that you just verbed a noun yourself. Best of all was the misery guts who wrote in to the FT complaining about “nouns moonlighting as verbs”, while being guilty of it him or herself - “moonlight” is not a proper verb of course, it is a noun that has been verbed.
I’ve just realised I misunderstood the rules of the competition, but I’m still glad to get that off my chest.
Predominantly (if not exclusively) Australian: fanging, as in ‘fanging along’ meaning to drive or travel at high speed. From Juan Manuel Fangio, Argentinian racing car driver.
To nixon, as in ‘totally nixoned’ meaning fucked up. From ‘had the dick’ to ‘had the richard’ …
We have Liebniz!