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My seven favorite words of the week:
exoskeleton
phalanx
elegiac
lachrymose
traipse
lumber (verb)
pad (verb)
Think of the words "message" and "text". I'm sure these words have been around for a while, but today I'd say they're most frequently used as verbs, i.e "She texted me" or "He messaged you", instead of "She sent a text message to me" or "He sent you a message". I imagine that a different part of the brain lights up whenever a word is used in this way. In high school a friend of my told me how she unintentionally verbed a noun, saying "He Oedipized himself" when trying to get across that, like Sophocles' tragic hero, someone stabbed his eyes out. I was bemused because it was like her to say something like that, and I thought it rather novel and clever.
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