Verbing the Stars

Some people have names that really lend themselves to "verbing", that peculiar linguistic phenomenon that causes nouns to become verbs. Examples: Xerox, Google, spam.

The first celebrity name that I personally verbed was Jackie Chan. As used in a sentence: "You'd better watch your mouth, or I will take this step-stool and Jackie Chan all over you." Or if you're about to perform a feat of impressive agility: "Maybe I'll just Jackie Chan up this trellis and go in through your sister's window."

I'm not going to claim that I'm the first person to verb Jackie Chan's name, but the first time I ever heard it was out of my own mouth, so I'm afraid that's the only evidence I have to go by.

Recently, I posted a message on Twitter where I accused somebody of "Glenn Beck[ing] my tweets". To Glenn Beck something is to, of course, either accidentally or intentionally misinterpret it, then apocalyptically overreact. Example: "Whoa, dude, you're totally Glenn Becking that text! I said I'd be late, not that I wasn't coming!" Or, if you will: "The media has Glenn Becked the president's comments unfairly."

This doesn't work for every celebrity. For instance, "Keith Olbermanning" something doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it? Also, I'm not even sure what that would mean. But when it works, it works, and you can't imagine a world in which the new verb never existed.

Try it today, won't you?