March 17, 2009  Verbing Weirds Language  A colleague recently
made a startling announcement.  He reported that on a short-hop
flight, an attendant had apologized to her parched passengers
because time had not allowed them to be “beveraged,” but not to
worry, for they would be “beveraged” on their connecting
flights.  Bemused, he announced, “I got verbed.”  Now he didn’t
know it, but he was echoing Calvin, who once informed Hobbes, “I
like to verb words,” referring to an unaccountable tendency
among speakers of contemporary English to convert nouns into
verbs. [Sidebar: Having been an English teacher, I know from sad
experience that any mention of anything having to do with
grammar immediately induces either extreme narcolepsy or
feelings of total inadequacy, for when I would reluctantly ’fess
up to people at cocktail parties that I taught English—and oh,
how I’d try to avoid doing so—I’d get a vacant nod, then the
person would drift away, leaving me to find another victim who
would likewise be convinced he’d