Years ago, I swore I'd never be so barbarous as to use nouns like program (let alone spelt in that way) or access as verbs. They were nouns, not verbs, period.
Well... Also years ago, when first I heard of writing on a screen, not on paper, I felt sure I'd be retired long before I had to do it. Within three years, The Economist had installed screens, and I was happily using them.
The same has happened with access and program. I've no idea how to program anything, but I readily access the output of those who do. And I barely notice these once-novelties of language when I say so.
A few decades ago, Britons loved to lament the way nouns were coming into use as verbs. We blamed it on the Americans, and saw it, at best, as uncouth.
Not so. English has for centuries used words as both noun and verb; hundreds, maybe thousands, of them. Here are a few off the top of my head: date, fate, gate, hate, mate, rate. Or fight, light, plight, right, sight. Noun and verb aren't always equally common. Nor obviously linked: witness plight, "predicament", and plight one's troth to, "promise to marry". But usually the link is clear, often a very close link, as in telegraph, wire, telephone, radio, fax and email.
Old hat
As in the past, the shift today is mostly from noun to verb. One's boss may "task" one with some duty, and one must "action" his instructions. I've never used task as a verb. Yet it's been one for centuries. I detest the verb action. Yet a dictionary of mine, recording it -admittedly, only in the legal sense of "bring an action against" - calls this sense "archaic". And that's a pretty archaic dictionary.
In short, "verbing" nouns - a nice example of doing just that - is old hat. So why do people bleat on against it? True, it's very common in America, and one may dislike Americanisms, or, more reasonably, their import elsewhere. But not the habit itself.
Rarer these days - indeed since pre-Norman English - and hence less noticed or disputed, is the "nouning" of verbs. Among modern examples, I've recently met ask, carry, fail, respond, reveal, even solve, as nouns.
Except in specialized senses, I find these very odd.Yet how novel are they? An ask is at least 1,000 years old. It all-but died, then reappeared around 1980; spreading, notably as a big ask, from charity fund-raisers' jargon to other fields. A carry has long meant the range of a gun or a shot; also the act (as in American football) or method (a fireman's carry, over his shoulder) of carrying something; and, in finance, 'carried interest', whatever that may be. It too has spread.
Vital details
A fail actually predates a failure, surviving in today's without fail. Recently reborn as a general term, it's still rare. But it has meant "failure in an exam" for over 130 years. It's a stock-market noun too.
A respond has a specialized sense in architecture, and in church music. Its use simply as "a reply" is rare, yet 400 years old. This too fell out of use, but has come back. I often get emails urging me to join some West African scamster's alleged scheme to defraud his alleged bank employers - in reality, me - and demanding my urgent respond. Not that I think that the senders are linguistic revivalists.
The reveal of a film or television drama is its last-scene revelation of vital details hidden till then. This also is an old usage revived 60-odd years ago.
As for a solve, this too is old, but wholly new and barbarous to me. I swear I'll never use it. I think.
thewordcage@yahoo.co.uk