Monday, January 22, 2007

Animals That Are Also Verbs

I love this stuff. Seton is quoted in the full article.

This is just for fun — a bit like the puzzles I regularly post, but more open-ended.
I was walking over the bridge over the river Cam one day when it hit me: the verb ‘duck’ is related to the noun ‘duck’! Ducks hunt for food by ducking under the water! It shocked me that I’d never noticed the relation between these two words before. I wondered which came first: the animal or the verb. Did people call these birds ‘ducks’ because they duck under the water, or did they invent the verb ‘duck’ after watching what ducks do?
More generally: which other names of animals are also verbs?

Find it all here.

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2007/01/animals_that_are_also_verbs.html

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