Term for when noun becomes a verb [duplicate]

This is in very common use on the internet. I just read this:

"[The] hotel employee walks in, I say "uh, puppy" and she just NOPEd the [heck] out of the room."

This is often done by adding 'd to the word.


I think the term you are looking for is "verbification":

Verbification, or verbing, is the creation of a verb from a noun, adjective or other word. Verbification is a type of functional shift. It is also a form of derivation, and may involve any of the various derivational processes.

This is a process of conversion of a word to include more word-classes for the lexicon.
This applies to any non-verb, even "proper nouns":

Proper nouns can also be verbed in the English language. "Google" is the name of a popular internet search engine. To google something now means to look it up on the internet, as in "He didn't know the answer, so he googled it."

That's a favourite, "google" is.


As others have said, "verbification" is common. The highfalutin Greek name of the more general concept of using a word as the "wrong" part of speech is anthimeria.

See also Calvin's opinion on the subject.


When any lexeme changes its word class without affixation, the process is known as ‘conversion’.


Verbification, or verbing. See Wikipedia's entry on linguistic conversion.


Actually, I believe the word you are looking for is anthimeria. From

In rhetoric, anthimeria, traditionally and more properly called antimeria (from the Greek: ἀντί, antí, “against, opposite” and μέρος, méros, “part”), is the use of a word as if it were a member of a different word class (part of speech); typically, the use of a noun as if it were a verb.