LA WEB DE READING
COMPREHENSION PREFERIDA POR LOS HISPANOHABLANTES
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NEW VERBS FROM
OLD NOUNS
Gwyneth Fox
It's not a new phenomenon,
but have you noticedhow many
nounsarebeing
used as verbs?
We all use them,often without
noticingwhat we're doing.
I
was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said 'I'll
pencil
it in my diary', and 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, which is a
shortening of facsimile – originally, an exact copy of a book or
document. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon
started talking about faxing something and promising
we'd fax
it immediately. So, noun into verb in two easy stages. Then along came
email,
and we were soon all
emailing each other madly. How did we do
without it? I can hardly imagine life without my daily dose of emails.
Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and
its software, which has generated another couple of new verbs. On my
AppleMac 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
– presumably coming from 'favourite pages', so the verb is derived
from an adjective not a noun. I wasn't really sure people said this, but
someone told me recently that they had
favorited a site I was
looking for and so they could easily give me its address.
A few years ago I noticed that lots of my friends had acquired
pagers, and kept saying things like 'I'll
page you as soon as I know
what time we're meeting'. They couldn't say it to me, though; I
refused to have one. So my children bought me a mobile phone – now
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 (either spoken or written) 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!
Source:
New English Digest
FILL THE GAPS BELOW WITH THE CORRECT NEW VERBS
AND TENSES USED IN THE ARTICLE ABOVE. THEN CHECK YOUR ANSWERS
HERE.
1.I won't send the letter by post, I will
it to you early
tomorrow
morning
when I go into the office.
2.I
can easily give you that website address because I have
it
on
my computer.
3.My
friend's mobile was on but he wasn't answering so I
him instead of speaking to him.
4.
I'llyou
this afternoon from the internet cafe.
5.
If we're definitely going to go away on holiday
during Christmas Season,
I'll