Definition:
The use of one part of speech for another. See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "one part for another"Examples and Observations:
- Anthimeria: use of a word that is normally one part of speech in a situation that requires it to be understood as a different part of speech. In English, and this is one of its greatest virtues, almost any noun can be verbed. Indeed, one can read scarce a page of Shakespeare without running across some new verb hatched out of his teeming loin. "To scarf," for example, was the verb implied in Hamlet's speech, where he says, 'My sea-gown scarf'd about me.' But he will create a verb from an adjective when the spirit moves:
And thus the native hue of resolution
(Linda Bridges and William F. Rickenbacker, The Art of Persuasion, National Review, 1991)
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
(Hamlet, III.i) - "[L]exical categories are quite useful. They make possible not only Mad Libs but also the rhetorical device anthimeria--using a word as a noncustomary part of speech--which is the reigning figure of speech of the present moment.
"That's not to say it's a new thing. In Middle English, the nouns duke and lord started to be used as verbs, and the verbs cut and rule shifted to nouns. Shakespeare was a pro at this; his characters coined verbs--"season your admiration," "dog them at the heels"--and such nouns as design, scuffle and shudder. Less common shifts are noun to adjective (S.J. Perelman's "Beauty Part"), adjective to noun (the Wicked Witch's "I'll get you, my pretty") and adverb to verb (to down a drink).
"This 'functional shifting,' as grammarians call it, is a favorite target of language mavens, whose eyebrows rise several inches when nouns like impact and access are verbed."
(Ben Yagoda, "Parts of Speech," The New York Times, July 9, 2006)
Pronunciation: an-thi-MER-ee-a
