Stan CareyMay 29, 2023

I've seen "solution" verbed quite a bit, as in "Let's solution that", but until today I don't remember seeing its complement, the nouning of "solve": "What are the solves?"

Rule 1 of verbing and nouning: It's nearly always older than you think. OED's first citation for "solve" as a noun? 1780.

#language #words #grammar #OED

Show threadKagan MacTane (he/him)May 29, 2023
@stancarey Thank you. This is encouraging me to fight my own tendency to care at all whether something's "originally" a noun or a verb. Seems like completely wasted effort, when flipping them all around has been a natural feature of the language for centuries. #learning #StagnationEqualsDeath
Show threadStan Carey
@kagan Exactly, and well said. This kind of functional shift has probably been intrinsic to language for as long as we've had language
May 29, 2023 at 5:08pmWeb
Show threadKagan MacTane (he/him)May 29, 2023

@stancarey Amusingly, I got 10/10 on the quiz. So it seems like I'm pretty good at tracking - or at least figuring out - which part of speech something originally was... but so what? It really doesn't matter where they came from.

I'll still probably use "solve" as a verb and "solution" as a noun in my own speech, because I don't want to sound like I'm using corp-speak. (I eschew "utilize" for the same reason.) But I'll stop twitching internally when others solution things and look for solves.