While they might grudgingly accept the presence of subprime in the dictionary, they are angered by shifts in the common core of the language, the everyday grammar of communication. These come from an ever-present and vociferous army of pedants and guardians of correctness, forever shaking their fists at their newspapers and penning Letters to the Editor. What’s not to like?Īh, but I can hear distant murmurs of protest, an occasional wail, a furious exclamation. Shouldn’t these and other nounings be included in the dictionary? After all, there is plenty of evidence, there are no space constraints, and everyone finds what they’re looking for.

I am sure it’s probably a bit of an ask but I certainly would appreciate the opportunity to run things by you occasionally… I’m not going to harp on about it, but it’s a tough ask for us, four Test Matches on the bounce. The noun ask, too, has its own collocates, particularly big and tough: I am very fond of Stephen King’s novels, but he regularly fails to nail the dismount: Under the Dome was claustrophobic and compelling, but the final reveal was bathetic and frustratingly arbitrary. This book review boasts two nounings in quick succession: dismount (in the curious phrase nail the dismount), and reveal: While fraud remains a problem, there is a clear disconnect between consumer feeling and retailer reality about the extent of online fraud. Disconnect, for example, is typically used more metaphorically than the verb, and tends to collocate with adjectives signalling importance – clear, dangerous, fundamental, huge, major, profound, and serious. These ‘nounings’ are quite distinct from their verbs. Some verbs that are increasingly ‘nouned’ are ask, eat (as in I wouldn’t call it a cheap eat), disconnect, and reveal. I’d like to consider the phenomenon of ‘nouning’, whereby people give verbs new senses as nouns – the mirror image of the better-known ‘verbing’.

Macmillan dictionary online