VerbNoun

Verbnoun is an informal term used in linguistics and lexicography to describe a word that can function as both a verb and a noun in the same language, typically without a change in its form. The phenomenon is a form of functional shift or conversion, where a word moves between categories based on syntactic position rather than through a new affix or inflection. English provides many familiar examples.

Common examples include run, code, board, and record. In sentences, the same spelling can serve as a noun or a verb depending on how it is used: The run was long. I will run tomorrow. Some pairs may show a subtle prosodic cue, such as a stress shift in certain words (for example, record as a noun [ˈrɛkərd] versus record as a verb [rɪˈkɔːrd] in varieties of English). Context and surrounding function words typically disambiguate the category.

Note that verbnoun is not a formal, universally recognized linguistic category. More standard terminology distinguishes between nominalizations or verbal nouns (nouns derived from verbs, often with -ing or -ed forms) and words that are truly ambivalent in function without morphological change. The study of such words touches on conversion, syntactic distribution, polysemy, and cross-linguistic variation in how languages treat nouns and verbs.

Related concepts include conversion or zero-derivation, nominalization, and ambitransitive or denominal verb phenomena. While many languages permit such flexibility, the exact behavior and productivity of verbnoun-like words vary by language and linguistic analysis.