Q: In the January “Language Tips,” you noted that a reader had criticized “sloppy language.” It is ironic that you discuss this kind of “sloppy language” when the current issue also contains an example of sloppy language, the use of the noun office as a verb. The caption to a photograph in the Bar News says that an Illinois attorney “offices at the Illinois Bar Center in Springfield.” I realize that the English language is always changing, but my dictionary does not yet include “office” as a verb.

A: Attorney Dick Bales, who sent the comment above, is like most English speakers. We are unhappy when speech categories are arbitrarily changed: verbs and adjectives created from nouns, nouns from verbs and adjectives, and so forth–unless we change them ourselves. The changes do seem to be happening much more quickly now than they used to.

But the change of categories may have an advantage: using a noun as a verb saves words. If office were used as a noun, that caption would probably read, “The attorney's office is located at the Illinois Bar Center in Springfield.” The shorter version is just as clear. And didn't our English teacher tell us to “write with verbs”?

I receive considerable mail from readers who have reacted that way about other new changes. One reader sent a copy of a memo from a fellow-professor saying that a colleague was “just desking it up in his office.” (Did he mean “loafing”?) Another reader recently expressed irritation that chagrin had been used as an active verb in the sentence, “The judge's decision does not chagrin a Washington academic ....” But when I checked, I found chagrin had been listed by dictionaries as an active verb in the 1980's, in the context, “The rejection of his proposal chagrined him deeply.”

Readers have criticized incentivize, a verb created from the noun incentive, which had not yet made it into The American Heritage Dictionary's 1987 edition, but is now listed as having been introduced about 1965. One reader has informed me he has seen the cut-off, incent, meaning “encourage.” Some readers have protested the verb sequence, which has been listed as far back as 1985. And it seems that almost everyone prefers the somewhat-new verb reference to the older verb refer. (I can find no reason for that preference; refer is shorter and just as clear.)

It has been a while since fun was only a noun. It is now firmly ensconced as an adjective (a fun time), and George Gobel used it as a verb, back in the 1960's, in “Are you funnin' me?” No complaints are voiced about the verbs surf, sponge, check, barbeque, and many others. A comic strip character spoke for all of us when he said, “I love to verb; verbing weirds words.”

Lawyers are generally comfortable with accessing files, and “breaching a contract” has become less common than “breaking a contract.” (But one lawyer wrote that in his youth, one could breach only ramparts, not contracts.) Lawyers' clients may not understand what they are talking about, but other lawyers do, when they NPC a complaint (find no probable cause) or say that a District Court's PCA'd an appeal (rendered an opinion stating per curiam is affirmed).

President Bush informs us that, as President, he is the decider, but that noun, formed from the verb to decide, is relatively new. Nobody has complained about the adjective remote becoming a noun. Category-changes abound. Skimming just one page of the local newspaper, I found complex, once just an adjective, used as a noun in, “Plans are being completed for a new complex.” There also was the phrase chief designate, in which the former noun chief is an adjective, modifying the noun designate, which began as a verb. On that page, too, was the important item that Miss USA had almost lost her crown because of her tendency to “hard-party” (a verb made from an adjective plus a noun).

The noun contract came from the past participle of the Latin noun contractus. Then someone made it a verb (to contract) meaning, “to draw more closely together.” At first, when it also came to mean “to enter into a contract,” that change was criticized; but it is now well established, and it is also an adjective, in contract bridge and other phrases.

Which “new words” should we get rid of? Should we throw out impact, access, contact, and prospect? Should we ban recent creations like: the verb stone-wall, and the compounds, in-group, out-group, stand-in, stand-up, stand-down, hard-put, hard-up and crack-down? How about put-down and up-beat? Are these acceptable as nouns? Verbs? Adjectives? Adverbs?

Franklin thought that last verb was “the most awkward and abominable of the three,” and suggested that if Webster shared his opinion about them, he ought to use his authority in “reprobating” them. One Franklin biographer noted that if Webster advocated such action, it is unlikely that his efforts progressed very far, for little effect can be noticed today. (From Seymour Stanton Block: Benjamin Franklin, His Wit, Wisdom, & Women.)