It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what 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. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. 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 emails.
Email reminds me, of course, of my puter and its software, which has produced another
couple of new verbs. On my puter 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—ing from “favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun.
Now my children bought me a mobile phone, 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 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!
【小题1】 “I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means .A．it was a firm arrangementB．it was an uncertain arrangementC．the arrangement should be written as a diaryD．he prefers a pencil to a pen【小题2】A website address can be easily found if it has been .A．emailedB．messagedC．favoritedD．texted【小题3】Which of the following has not been used as a verb, yet?A．messageB．pageC．emailD．mobile【小题4】The best title for this passage is .A．New Verbs from NounsB．The Development of the English languageC．New Technology and New wordsD．Technology and Language.B
网友回答
(答案→)B
解析：
【小题1】B 推理题。根据第二段第2行meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!
说明用铅笔写意为着不是最终的决定，只是临时的决定，故B正确。
【小题2】C 推理题。根据第四段最后一行I favorite—ing from “favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun.说明我把这些网站设置成我最喜欢的网站，通过这种方法可以让我很快就找到这些网站。故C正确。
【小题3】D 细节题。根据and we were soon all emailing each other madly. 和I favorite—ing from “favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun.以及I can message someone, 说明ABC都可以作为动词，只有D项文章没有提及可以作为动词，故D正确。
【小题4】A 主旨大意题。本文通过多个例子告诉我们很多名词都已经转换成了动词，故A正确。