Thursday, December 26, 2002

Word Repurposing

I can think of many nouns that have been verbed: "I tried to /knife/ the intruder," "Jones will /chair/ the meeting," etc. I can also think of many verbs that have been nouned: "Have a /go/ at solving the puzzle," "He made one /throw/ of the dice," etc. The transformation of one part of speech into another is a pretty common phenomenon in English. But I can think of only two nouns that have been adverbed, and both concern one's position in a moving vehicle. If you "ride /shotgun/" in a car, you ride in the front passenger seat; if you "ride /bitch/," you sit between the driver and the front passenger (or, sometimes, in the middle of the back seat). Can anyone out there think of other examples of nouns being used as adverbs? (To count, it must be possible to use the word as an adverb without any suffixes like "-ly" attached to change its form.)

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