A gerund is a noun derived from a verb - as in walking is good exercise; what do you call a verb derived from a noun - as in - don’t ask me, google it (which I did and came up with zip.) Is there such a term? Thanks.
Years ago, a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon had Calvin musing on how “verbing nouns weirds language.”
The Handbook of Word-Formation refers to the practice as zero-derivation and also quotes Calvin:
This is an article about verbing nouns: http://www.stcboston.org/archives/articles/nouns.shtml (suggests there is no term)
And a list of verbed nouns: http://www.wordspy.com/index/Language-VerbedNouns.asp
Suggests “verbing”: Verbing Nouns
Thanks, guys. You’ve answered my question.
Except that a gerund is just a verb form that is used as a noun (or part of a noun phrase). Gerunds also refer to the action the verb describes. It’s distinct from a verb being used as a noun. In those cases the noun’s meaning is often either an object of that verb or some thing that performs the verb.
It is less common for verbs to become nouns than the reverse, but it happens. “Hire” is a fairly recent example (I think). Others have been around quite a while, like “turn” or “bend” and lots like that. Plus, there’s the obsolete ones, like “ask”, “think”, or “say”.