I've compiled a list of topics to bring up on a slow day. Here's the next one: What's up with "revenge"? It's a perfectly good noun, but lately I've been reading, here and there, that so-and-so intends to "revenge himself upon" another.
I don't mind coining new verbs, or adopting nouns or adjectives to fill in a gap. But we already have a verb for this; it's "avenge". The poor benighted ignorami who write this meant that such a one intends to avenge himself upon someone.
I have the same reaction (you've probably heard me complain about it already) to someone "reverencing" an ethical principle, or God. In principle there's nothing wrong with turning a noun into a verb, but it's too late for this one; we can already revere God. Same with "service" when we can "serve". No doubt you'll think of others.
The fact that "revenge" was used as a verb is a mere result of "CONVERSION", i.e. the process of turning a verb into a noun or a noun into a verb, an adjective into verb or an adverb and so forth. This process is also called zero affixation in linguistic literature which is proper to English word building. The latter, to the best of my knowledge, dates back to the end of Middle English period. Some vivid examples of conversion might be [hand]- noun and [ to hand]-verb, [present] - noun, and [to present]- verb, [export] - noun, and [to export] -verb, etc.. However, it turns out that the process of conversion or zero affixation is not plain sailing. Very often it is not clear which word is the input and which one is the output. This is really eye-catching to do research into.
As far as [revenge] is concerned, I suppose that the verb [revenge] existed in the language long ago and has even got a strong foothold in the language. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD, 2006:1300) provides us with the following data for [revenge] as a verb:
PHR V. revenge yourself on sb/ be revenged on sb (literary) to punish or hurt sb because they have made you suffer: She vowed to be revenged on them all.
Moreover, OALD (2006:90) also has it that avenge is mostly used as a verb and revenge - as a noun. However, "in more formal and literary English revenge can also be used as a verb.
I think that this also a development of the linguistic sign and a constant change in the word-stock of the English language.
And I would recommend the following site on the topic:
http://www.phil.muni.cz/plonedata/wkaa/BSE/BSE_1969-08_Scan/BSE_08_27.pdf
By saying conversion, I meant mostly grammatical conversion.
Another example which is more unacceptable for me and which I came across is the use of [to can]. How is that possible to use modal auxiliary [can] as a simple verb?
I don't think I've ever read where someone wrote "to can", although come to think of it, it would be a natural mistake for someone who's learning English as a foreign language. I agree, though, I can't think of any circumstances in which it would be right.
Unless—I just thought of this—it's the other verb "can", meaning to preserve. Maybe the write intends to can peaches this afternoon.
Back in college, they taught us about "deponent" Greek verbs (my Greek teacher said the word originally meant "crippled", though I don't recognize that meaning in the Latin roots). Deponent verbs are those that don't have all their forms; there may be no passive-voice form, or optative mood, whatever. Someone who knows more about English grammar than I do may correct me, but I think of certain English words that way: "Can", for example, has no subjunctive mood or future tense so if I want to change "we can do it" to the future I have to say "we will be able to do it". Conversely "go" has no past tense; we say "went" instead (which I take it used to be the past tense of "wend", though we don't remember that now).
Bob Bridges said
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Unless—I just thought of this—it's the other verb "can", meaning to preserve. Maybe the write intends to can peaches this afternoon....
The online Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has the noun, can, much earlier, a1000, than the verb form, 1861. This was a conversion which took a long time.