Further to my post about the changing use of tenses in English, I've recently noticed another trend of turning nouns into verbs, often with a tweaked meaning.
One well known example is "to ghost somebody", which now seems widespread, and I only had to notice a headline on the BBC website the other day to realise I was about to learn another. The afore-mentioned headline read as follows, "How to tell if you're being breadcrumbed at work", and a quick spot of googling (a proper noun that's become a verb in itself!) soon explained the origin of the term.
The obvious question, of course, is just what exactly "to poetry somebody" might end up meaning....
I haven’t had much time for reading lately. Poems and stories I’ve read in
the past pop into my head a lot though. Mallarmé’s ‘Brise marine’ is one of
thos...
Yes, it makes me cringe when I hear nouns turned into verbs. For example, a recent commercial relayed "Brain Better" to promote a pill that would help you think better. Why not say to "think better" or to "retain more information" take this pill.
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