John Krische wrote:
I hate to break it to you, but "task" has had a verb definition for over 2000 years. It comes from the Latin "taxare", ie, "to tax". "Tax" and "task" used to mean the same thing, in both the noun and verb senses. Using it in the verb sense just kind of fell out of fashion for a while in the 20th century is all. Heck, if you really think about it, what happened to taxare->task some 1500+ years ago (the change happened somewhere in the dark ages) is the exact opposite of what's currently happening in some circles with ask->axe. Following that line, simple mispronunciation by uneducated peasants in the dark ages may be the whole reason tax became task, and part of the regular lexicon. Lingual history is fascinating stuff, at least to me.
BTW - any English word ending in "x" or "sk" is almost always a Latin word, and thus very old. Chances are the Romans were using the word in question in many different senses thousands of years ago, for Latin as a language tended to reuse root words a lot. Just kinda the way that language works. Can't blame the modern, nearly useless public school system for that, nor even modern culture. In fact, it's a testament to the strength of Latin as a language, to retain so much of its base structure and lexicon so many centuries later.
Even if we ignore the Latin etymology of "task", Melville used the word in the verb sense in Moby Dick, later quoted almost verbatim (as many parts of Moby Dick were quoted or paraphrased) in Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan. "He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him!" Moby Dick was written in what, 1850-51? So, sense-changing is not even a recent thing, even if "task" didn't have a Latin root with an existing verb sense.
Despite the bad example of "task", I know what you mean on "verbing". However, it's a fundamental part of lingual evolution. Nouns becoming verbs and vice versa is not a new phenomenon; it's been going on for pretty much all of recorded history, maybe longer in oral traditions. It's not about sounding more important or not, it's about communicating an idea, making a concept clear. If "verbing" a noun gets the job done, eventually that noun will have a regular verb sense in every dictionary, guaranteed. That's how languages grow to meet new needs. Never forget that languages are tools, and tools have changed to meet new needs for all of human history.
This whole discussion does serve to show a rather disturbing point though: how misunderstood our own vocabulary is, in both the actual definition of words and the history of those words. Everybody should study history more closely. It's such a great guide for all parts of life, from grand political movements to the smallest changes in languages over time. Sometimes knowing why something is the way it is and how it got that way makes things so much easier to understand, at least in my experience. It certainly explains why a 26-mile run would have an unlikely name like "marathon," as a small example. It's not a modern word. Look it up sometime. That's another 2000+ year-old word still with us today.
But enough of this. Later.
John K.
John, I think you may have just written an English paper for Mr. Oberoi.
