It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.
I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, but my friend said “You can ink it in”, meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!
Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology. An obvious example is the word fax. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. Then along came email and we were soon all emailing each other madly. How did we live without it? I can hardly imagine life without my daily emails.
Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and its software, which has produced another couple of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think I'll want to look at again, thus saving all the effort of remembering their addresses and calling them up from scratch. I can do the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite—coming from “favorite pages”, so the verb comes from an adjective not a noun.
Now my children bought me a mobile phone, known simply as a mobile and I had to learn yet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message for them on their phone. Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when and where to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, that is, phone them using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Perhaps I’ ll start using it myself!
65. “I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means “____________”.
A. it was a firm arrangement B. he prefers a pencil to a pen
C. the arrangement should be written as a diary D. it was an uncertain arrangement
66. A website address can be easily found if it has been ____________.
A. favorited B. messaged C. emailed D. texted
67. Which of the following has not been used as a verb yet?
A. message B. mobile C. email D. fax
68. The best title for this passage is____________.
A. How to use verbs B. Development of the English language
C. Origins of verbs D. New Verbs from Nouns