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"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances [...] They're too common to be interesting."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Sorry dang, sorry HN.


While I don't always love 'denominalization' (if I that's the right word), the verb 'speed' is a common one, e.g., 'speed up'.

Every word we use was created at some point, often in the same way. There is nothing magical about the people and the words they created in 1824 that makes them better than us and words we create in 2024, except perhaps that the 1824 words we still use have stood the test of time.

Also, as far as I can tell, the verb form is as old as the noun form.


(CW: pedantry)

Well actually, “speed up” is a phrasal verb that is semantically distinct from “speed”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs

But that all’s irrelevant because this article uses verb definition 5 from Wiktionary for “speed”:

> (transitive) To increase the rate at which something occurs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs


“He was speeding.” Love English!


I read moby dick for the first time last summer. That guy verbs nouns, adjects verbs and nouns adjects like he's building language from first principles. It takes a bit getting used to, but eventually it both speeds up and broadens language. Why use different roots for each category? And with each root connoting slightly different, why not use that and pick the exact root that means best?


Yes. They had verbed it by the 12th century, according to: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/speed#word-histor...


Only in the archaic sense 3a, "to prosper in an undertaking", which is surely not what's meant in the TFA.


Have you known anyone who received a ticket (citation) for "speeding" while driving?


Yes, that's another different sense. In fact it's an intransitive verb that wouldn't fit here grammatically.


I sped read the title so didn't notice




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