It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as

It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns arebeing used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.

   I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week,and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, and my friend said “You can ink it in”,meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!

   Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology.An obvious example is the word fax. We all got used to sending and receivingfaxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'dfax it immediately. Then along came email, and we were soon all emailing eachother madly. How did we do without it? I can hardly imagine life without mydaily emails.

   Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and itssoftware, which has produced another

couple of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from theWorld Wide Web that I think I'll want to look at again, thus saving all theeffort of remembering their addresses and calling them up from scratch. I cando the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite—coming from“favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun.

  Now mychildren bought me a mobile phone, known simply as a mobile and I had to learnyet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message forthem on their phone. Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when andwhere to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, thatis, phone them using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure Iwill soon. Perhaps I’ll start using it myself!

1. “I’ll pencilit in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means         .

      A. it was a firm arrangement

　B. it was an uncertain arrangement

      C. the arrangement should be written as a diary

D. he prefers a pencil to a pen

2.A website address can be easily found if it has been______.

       A. emailed    B.messaged    C. favorited      D. texted

3.Which of the following has not been used as a verb, yet?

       A. message    B.page        C. email        D. mobile

4.The best title for this passage is____.

       A. New Verbs from Nouns

　B. The Development of theEnglish language

       C. New Technology and New words

   D. Technology and Language.

试题答案

【答案】

1.B

2.C

3.D

4.A  

【解析】

试题