Adverbing, verbing, and adjectiving

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"I don't want to go all language nerd on you," says the female character in today's xkcd cartoon, "but I just legit adverbed 'legit', verbed 'adverb', and adjectived 'language nerd'." Is she correct?

Almost entirely, yes. The structure of I just legit adverbed 'legit' has legit (a clipping from legitimate) functioning as premodifier of a verb, exactly as if it were an adverb.

And the verb of that sentence is adverbed, the preterite tense form of a putative verb lexeme adverb, so adverb has been verbed (i.e., used as a verb), which makes the claim (I just) verbed 'adverb' true.

Finally, the context go all ____ on you seems to have a very strong preference for adjective phrases in the blank position:


I don't want to go all sentimental on you.
*I don't want to go all crying my eyes out on you.
*I don't want to go all in the garden on you.

Maybe predicative noun phrases work to some extent; that is, perhaps you could say that this is also grammatical:

?I don't want to go all college president on you.

So perhaps it would have been safer for a real language nerd to say (I just) predicative-complemented 'language nerd'. But for the most part what you get in the go all ____ on you is adjective-headed phrases, so (I just) adjectived 'language nerd' is arguably accurate.

Basically, the xkcd cartoonist Randall Munroe has it right, as usual. And by the way, the woman in the cartoon has also clearly verbed 'adjective'.

[Update: Mark Liberman did some empirical investigation and found that "go all ___ on" very commonly has predicative noun phrases in the blank position. So the adjective bit is not right; I was a bit too generous to Randall Munroe.]



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