Nouns that are now also verbs?

August 7, 2007 3:26 PM

Is there a list of nouns that have become verbs and when they were officially added as a verb to one of the main dictionaries?

I was talking with someone they were surprised when I used a word as a verb. It got me thinking about nouns that are now used a verbs.
Ex: Google (I'll google it), Hammer (I hammered it), Phone (I'll phone you), wordsmith (I'll wordsmith the report)
If you look up telephone at Merriam-Webster Online for example:
Noun: 1844
Verb: 1877

There are articles and lists of new words added to dictionaries but are there official lists of existing nouns being added as verbs to dictionaries or a list of the popular ones in the last 10 years?

posted by hokie409 to education (7 comments total)

It doesn't have dates but this is a pretty huge list of nouns turned into verbs.
posted by DieHipsterDie at 3:36 PM on August 7, 2007

modern dictionaries are descriptivist, which means they consider the language users the "official" notice on a when a word becomes part of the language. They'll add it to the next edition of a dictionary when it's been noticed by enough editors, but I wouldn't think of it as "official" so much as "historically noted" or something like that.
posted by mdn at 4:10 PM on August 7, 2007

Eyeball this.

P.S. If you look up tantalize, would the illustration depict the website verbednoun.com?
posted by rob511 at 4:48 PM on August 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

The first one among geeks, I think, was "access".
posted by yclipse at 5:30 PM on August 7, 2007

party
posted by dawdle at 5:31 PM on August 7, 2007

quoting thinkingwoman in a later askme: xerox
posted by kch at 9:50 PM on August 7, 2007

I can't help you find a list, but I think English is unique in that almost anything can be made into a verb if you try hard enough. Kids were bused out into suburbs from the inner city. We schooled them. I brained him with a rock. We tabled the issue.
posted by creasy boy at 3:07 AM on August 8, 2007