“What verb,” asks Helen Sword in the latest “Draft” column in The New York Times, “describes the act of creating a new verb from another part of speech? Verbify, of course—or, simply, verb.” She’s ...

When last we met, I mentioned some current examples of functional shifting, or anthimeria, especially adjective-to-noun (AT&T’s slogan “Rethink Possible”) and verb-to-noun (referring to someone as a ...