By Mary Morel
We often add endings to nouns to turn them into verbs. Some examples are:
- versed (played against)
- googled
- unfriend
- downsizing.
This topic came to my attention because someone raised it in a workshop and then I saw a notice on a doctor’s waiting room that said: 251 women have been randomised…
This struck me as odd, but a colleague informed me that in scientific and medical circles, randomised means randomly assigning women to particular treatment groups. I still think it is an odd word!
Other peculiar examples I have come across include:
- The program incentived the competitors.
- He summited the mountain.
- The team interfaced.
Sometimes existing verbs work better than verbalised nouns.
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