I love words that can double as both noun and verb. I admire their mercurial nature, their stubborn unwillingness to be type-cast as one thing and one thing only.

Most nouns are, by nature, rather stolid creatures, for which we must blame the harshness of their early years. Shortly after birth they are whisked away to be raised in complete isolation, in state-funded schools that shield them from all unwanted outside influences. These vast “noun nurseries” are like something out of Dickens, I am told, with long hallways stretching into the dim distance, off of which doors open into the various classrooms. Each wide-eyed new noun is led docilely down the halls and gently ushered into their predetermined room: a room filled entirely — and solely — with examples of the object that he (or she) is to represent in texts. The door is then slammed shut, and locked, and the noun-in-training rarely sees the light of day again for years.

It is a cold and lonely life, and many new nouns crumble and fall apart under the strain. “Trum”, for example, was lost forever to us due to some inherent weakness in his genes. The poor thing split quite cleanly between the initial “t” and “r”. “T” tried to make it as a solo act, but then married far beneath herself, entering into an illicit, and somewhat sordid liason with “shirt”. The rest of “trum” took relentlessly to drink…

Which is why you will never read about a trum in books, and why the few trums which still live in the wild are always lurking in the shadows: out of shame for being unrepresentable by language.

But those nouns which make it through their schooling: reliable, dependable and predictable though they may appear — they, too, can be convinced to let loose their inner verb. Nouns are the meek accountants of the linguistic world, and have always harboured secret longings to live among the buccaneers. Almost any noun can be coaxed, I do believe, into leading a more active lifestyle, a truly vivid life full of influence and event!

So take a noun aside sometime, and treat him to a beer. A glass or two into the evening and he’ll be putty in your hands.

And by morning he’ll be hanging out with the poets, drunk and singing, verbing away as if he had been born to it…