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>Has anyone spotted any other similar oddities in the wild? I wonder if it's a trend.

The noun-ifying of verbs and verb-ifying of nouns has been a trend in language evolution for hundreds (and possibly thousands) of years. For example, the etymology for "drink" is a verb of "to drink"[1]. A few hundred years later, it was noun-ified. (We can now say "I need a drink" -- without the language police snickering.) We just don't notice it and/or it doesn't bother us because it acquired its extra "noun" meaning before we were born.

By some quirk of human nature, we are extremely annoyed if words acquire these new extra meanings after we are born. This means the cycle repeats itself... the people living in 2018 are irritated by it but the people living in year 2130 won't care. (To the world: Please stop changing the language and keep all meanings+spellings+pronunciations static while I'm still alive!)

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/drink



One that always stuck out to me is "burgle", coming from "burglar", likely by mistake.


Better than the atrocity of “burglarize”!


The line from the old Hobbit movie of "you're the burglar, go in there and burgle something" was quaint enough that I still remember it from my childhood.

The minor fascination with noun-er & noun was probably why.


Americans never use the word "burgle". The first time I heard British people saying it, I wanted to cut my ears off.


Plaintiff comes from plaintive




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