河南省新乡市新誉佳高级中学2015届高三英语二轮复习专题卷阅读理解(09)
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Have you noticed how many nouns are being 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 must ink it in”,meaning that it was a firm arrangement!
Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology.An obvious example is the word “fax”.We all got used to sending and receiving faxes,and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we’d fax it immediately.Then along came emails,and we were soon all emailing each other madly.How did we do without it?I can hardly imagine life without my daily emails.
Also,my computer and its software have produced another couple of new verbs.On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think I’ll want to look at again.And I can do 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 this time.
Now my children bought me a mobile phone,known simply as a mobile and I have to learn yet more new verbs.I can message someone,that is,I can leave a message for them on their phone.Or I can text them,write a few words suggesting,when and where to meet,for example.How long will it be before I can mobile them,that is,phone them using my mobile?I haven’t heard that verb yet,but I’m sure I will soon.Perhaps I’ll start using it myself!