Well and Good
I don’t recall mentioning this grade-school point of grammar before. The difference between “well” and “good.”
- Well—an adverb. Goes with verbs. Well done!
- Good—an adjective. Goes with nouns. Good lesson!
- Yes, both words can be nouns, but that’s a lesson for another day.
Okay, class, here’s a test. Did he get it correct or not? Last panel.
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A Somewhat Bogus Rule
The problem with the rule is that nouns can so often be turned into verbs…
…so when you’re a verb, this is okay. But you know that, right?
Hmm. I Don’t Think a Noun Form Exists for this One
Here’s the comic:
https://www.gocomics.com/agnes/2020/07/26
“Addled” is an adjective. For that matter, you can’t go up to the front of the room and addle, either, so I don’t see a verb form, either.
What do you think?
Nouns As Verbs
Special because in this case all the nouns are proper nouns.
In case you don’t know, the character on the right is named “Rat.” And the technical name for this is “back-formation.”
So how’s your name? Could it be a verb? Mention it in the comments.
I Had Forgotten this Word
This post is mainly for the language geeks among us. I have occasionally used the expression “verbing a noun” (use the search box in the upper right corner), mainly because I had seen that usage, and had forgotten that we have a technical word for that! Backformation. In fact, to use “verb” as a verb is example of backformation. But there’s more to it than that.
If you’re interested, here’s a pretty good article about backformation:
Sorry, no comic today.
