We’ve been verbed: 16 odd nouns that have now become verbs

The English language is constantly evolving, reason why many people believe it’s so rich and vibrant. One of the word trends that’s been growing apace in recent times is that of nouns being turned into verbs. While purists are aghast, saying it weirds language, others think it’s cool and makes things simpler. Here are some nouns that have recently become verbs.

1. Podium: In the sporting world, athletes who’ve made the top three places podium.

2. Final: Also in sports, there’s now the practice of saying athletes have finalled.

3. Flipchart:  On campus and in boardrooms, you no longer present a flipchart, you simply flipchart.

4. Handbag: This one’s not quite new and goes back to Margaret Thatcher, who was known to handbag her opponents.

5. Anniversary: This, you must agree, is a bit weird and it’s trendy especially with fashion stores. Marks & Spencer recently announced that better-balanced autumn ranges should allow M&S to anniversary tougher comparisons.

6. Doughnut: Is this sweet, do you think? When supporters surround a leader, especially in parliament, and form a ring, they are doughnutting.

7. Bookmark: Once it was a thick piece of paper that held your place in a book. Now you bookmark websites on a computer.

8. Inbox: We began with a folder which held e-mail. Now we inbox people on Facebook.

9. Zorb:  A zorb is that massive orb that you crawl into and then hurtle downhill in. Or, you can just go zorbing, just as you can rollerblade and snowboard, if you’re into extreme sports.

10. Pit: On the racing circuit, drivers find it too long to take a pit stop to refuel. Now, they simply pit.

11. Task: Employees don’t have to perform tasks nowadays. They are tasked with coding, updating files or creating backups.

12. Boilerplate: Documents are boilerplated these days, when they automatically include routine inputs.

13. Transition:  If making a transition seems too roundabout, you can transition to a new arrangement/system/place. But this one gets some people mad; they prefer the simpler ‘switch’ or ‘move’.

14. Impact: The corporate world loves turning nouns into verbs. So conditions impact decisions. Again, purists aren’t pleased. ‘Affect’ is better they say if you must use a verb.

15. Rightsize:  Some people think this is a euphemism for job cuts. But rightsizing is what companies do when they want to acquire an optimal size.

16. Action: This, again, is business speak. So when a CEO has 100 mails to attend to, he might just action 60 of them.

Well, I hope you have bookmarked the page to revisit these changes!

Also Read

Guess what, WTF is now officially a dictionary word

This one word can answer 20 most complicated interview questions ever. Don’t believe us? Hodor!