Writers and language geeks inherit a ranking system of sorts: verbs good, adjectives bad, nouns sadly unavoidable. Verbs are action, verve! “I ate the day / Deliberately, that its tang / Might quicken ...

NARRATOR: Oh, look! There’s some ‘thing’ sleeping in the trees! Common nouns are the names of things, that’s people, places or objects, while a proper noun is the name of a particular person, place or ...

The conventional grammar wisdom is that turning verbs into nouns — or what is termed “nominalization” in linguistics — is bad for the health of one's prose. The evidence is painfully clear. Take this ...

Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 8: When Nouns Grew Genitals Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab ∙ Play in Stitcher Languages all across the world have what’s called ...