I’m fascinated by words and phrases whose form is the opposite of their meaning. Sort of like an oxymoron, but on a meta-level.<\/p>\n
One example that comes to mind is “to noun” — a term that describes the process of turning a verb into a noun. For example, an archeological dig<\/i>, a witch hunt<\/i>, a clam bake<\/i>, are all examples of a verb being repurposed to serve as a noun.<\/p>\n
They have all been nouned. Yet “to noun” is itself an example of a noun that has been repurposed to serve as a verb — exactly the opposite of nouning (I guess you could say it has been verbed).<\/p>\n
What should we call these examples of the form of a word or phrase suggesting the opposite of its meaning, such as “breviloquent”, or “eschew obfuscation”?<\/p>\n
I’m open to suggestions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m fascinated by words and phrases whose form is the opposite of their meaning. Sort of like an oxymoron, but on a meta-level. One example that comes to mind is “to noun” — a term that describes the process of turning a verb into a noun. For example, an archeological dig, a witch hunt, a … Continue reading “Nouning”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12495"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12495"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12499,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12495\/revisions\/12499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}