One of the best things about the English language is its flexibility.

One of the worst things about the English language is its flexibility.

Flip a coin to select one of these statements, and do a survey of people to see whether or not they agree with it – then do the same survey using the other one. We’ll bet that you get approximately the same results from both. It’s easy to appreciate the richness and variety of English vocabulary, but there are times when life (and vocabulary improvement) would be easier if there were only one way each word could be used and defined.

One of the ways one word can take two roles is by the process called verbification or verbing, where a noun is converted into a verb without being changed in any other way. This isn’t a new process in English, of course. Think about the fact that you have a head, but that you can also be headed in the right direction; that a cat has a tail but that a private detective can spend hours tailing a suspect; or that standing at the foot of a mountain is quite different from footing the bill at a restaurant. There are many common verbs that started out as nouns, and in general we don’t think too much about the shift, unless there’s some confusion because the new meaning is so different. In the last example above, it’s a bit hard to see why “to foot” equals “to pay,” and the origin of the phrase is somewhat unclear, though it’s probably related to the fact that the total of a bill is shown at the bottom, or foot, of the page.

Verbification has gotten more notoriety in the last few years because of its increasing popularity, and words that once would never have been verbified are now in common use – though some are still being disputed by linguists as to their grammatical accuracy. Here are some examples of verbs that started out as nouns:

to calendar
Make sure the program secretary calendars all those meeting dates on the website so that every participant stays informed.

to chair
Because the head of the board was ill last night, I ended up chairing the entire meeting.

to medal
Although he’s one of the fastest runners on a short track, he’s not expected to medal in any of the long-distance events.

to microwave
Everyone knows about the urban legend of the woman who accidentally microwaved her poodle.

to parent
I can’t believe how many books and magazines there are these days on parenting techniques!

to source
All of the top chefs make sure to source the best ingredients for their dishes.

There are lots of other noun-to-verb English vocabulary words out there to learn – all you have to do is google “verbification” and you’ll find the information you need.