single word requests - What is it called when a non-verb is used as a verb?


This is in very common use on the internet. I just read this:



"[The] hotel employee walks in, I say "uh, puppy" and she just NOPEd the [heck] out of the room."



This is often done by adding 'd to the word.



Answer



I think the term you are looking for is "verbification":



Verbification, or verbing, is the creation of a verb from a noun, adjective or other word. Verbification is a type of functional shift. It is also a form of derivation, and may involve any of the various derivational processes.



This is a process of conversion of a word to include more word-classes for the lexicon.
This applies to any non-verb, even "proper nouns":



Proper nouns can also be verbed in the English language. "Google" is the name of a popular internet search engine. To google something now means to look it up on the internet, as in "He didn't know the answer, so he googled it."



That's a favourite, "google" is.


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