3 ms·

The use of "foreground" as a verb in that article really bothers me for some reason.

• skywhopper 12y ago
  I have the same gut instinct as you do, but a huge proportion of English* verbs come into being this way, taking over nouns as a shorthand way of expressing the idea. For a good discussion and some links to background, see this recent Language Log post: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16394 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16394 * I restricted my assertion to English because I don't know one way or the other if other languages tend to this sort of evolution. My impression is that particular languages tend to be open to some types of changes and less open to others, but that which changes varies from language to language.
  • mryingster 12y ago
    This reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin discusses verbing words. http://assets.amuniversal.com/6f34d860df950131725e005056a9545d http://assets.amuniversal.com/6f34d860df950131725e005056a954... That's kind of an amazing aspect of English as a language; you can misuse words entirely, yet still convey a message. I wonder if this linguistic flexibility is due to the fact that our language is a mixture of so many other languages with disparate grammatical rules.
  • zizzer 12y ago
    Thanks for the article link. I think the evolution of English through new word use is generally an excellent and exciting thing. It can just be a little disconcerting adjusting to new usage (at least new for me personally, in this case).