For my paper, I would like to explore “verbing.” Verbing is creating new words by using a noun as a verb it may also be known as “denominalization.” The term “verbing” has taken the noun “verb” and turned it into a verb by adding the past-tense maker “ed.” Countless words have been created through verbing, some that we even use daily. When hearing or reading a verbed word for the first time, initial instinct might lead a person to think that they misheard or misread the word. Some might even argue that verbed words aren’t words at all, but as a descriptivist I obviously disagree! There are different theories to explain why people have verbed words and I would like to explore some of these possible explanations. Some people claim that people verb out of laziness and others believe that it is a process that simply “makes English English.” I would also like to investigate and discuss how technology has influenced our vocabulary in relation to verbing.  I have nosed around and found a few specific examples that I would like to focus closely on. The word “friend” is typically used as a noun, but in more recent times it has been used as a verb. People “friend” each other all the time on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. A common theme of verbing that you may notice is company names oftentimes are turned into verbs. Uber Technologies is an application-based transportation platform where people can request a car service to drive them from point A to point B. Over the past decade Uber became an extremely popular application and people began to verb the word “uber.” Rather than saying I used Uber to get from here to there, one might simply say “I Ubered.” Bicycle is another noun that can be verbed. A bicycle is defined as a “human powered vehicle composed of two wheels and a frame, propelled by pedals and steered with handlebars.” If a person wanted to say that he/she rode a bike to the park they might simply say “I bicycled to the park.”To assist with my research, I will refer to the Oxford English dictionary, JStor.org as well as an article by Richard Nordquist called “The Definition of Verbing in Grammar.”

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