New verbs from old nouns

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, which is a shortening of facsimile – originally, an exact copy of a book or document. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. So, noun into verb in two easy stages. 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 dose of emails.

Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and its software, which has generated another couple of new verbs. On my AppleMac computer 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 favourite – presumably coming from 'favourite pages', so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun. I wasn't really sure people said this, but someone told me recently that they had favourited a site I was looking for and so they could easily give me its address.

A few years ago I noticed that lots of my friends had acquired pagers, and kept saying things like 'I'll page you as soon as I know what time we're meeting'. They couldn't say it to me, though; I refused to have one. So my children bought me a mobile phone – now 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 (either spoken or written) 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!


FILL THE GAPS BELOW WITH THE CORRECT NEW VERBS AND TENSES USED IN THE ARTICLE ABOVE.

1. I won't send the letter by post, I will __________ it to you early tomorrow morning when I go into the office.

2. I can easily give you that website address because I have ________________ it on my computer.

3. My friend's mobile was on but he wasn't answering so I __________________ him instead of speaking to him.

4. I'll ___________________ you this afternoon from the internet cafe.

5. If we're definitely going to go away on holiday during Christmas Season, I'll _________________ in the dates.

KEY:

1. fax 2. favourited 3. messaged 4. e-mail 5.ink