The Jargon File
Everybody knows about this. Except everyone that doesn’t know about it, and everyone else who’s forgotten it:
- most nouns can be adjectived: “lame” -> “lameitude”, “cruft -> cruftitude”
- all nouns can be verbed: “all nouns can be verbed”
- all verbs can be nouned: “hack” -> “hackification”, “disgust” -> “disgustitude”
…and the plural of “mongoose” should be “polygoose”.
Take that, David Foster Wallace - oops, too bad your screed against evolutionary grammar is only available via pulpware.