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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Shakespeare, Calvin and Hobbes

By The Daily Dish
Dec 10 2007, 6:12 AM ET

A reader writes:

You mentioned Shakespeare's verbing of nouns. I wish I could find the actual comic strip, but here's the text:

Calvin: I like to verb words.

Hobbes: What?

Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing? Now, it's something you do. It got verbed. Verbing weirds language.

Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.

Which inspired this:

"First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs." -- Peter Ellis.

Shakespeare demonstrates that when you're a transcendent genius, the rules that help the rest of us just get in your way.



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