nounverb

Nounverb is a term used in linguistics to describe a word form that can function as both a noun and a verb without any change in form. In English, these instances arise through conversion or zero-derivation, where the grammatical category shifts according to usage rather than through affixes or alternate forms.

The same spelling serves as two parts of speech, with the intended category determined by context and sentence function. Typical examples include park, text, run, play, light, cook, and drive. For example: We will park the car. The park is crowded. I sent a text. Text the number when ready. I went for a run. The run was longer than planned. The play is on tonight. The play lasts two hours. Light the candle, please. The light from the window is bright.

Nounverbs illustrate a flexible word class system and are common in English. They rely on sentence position and surrounding words to convey whether the noun or the verb sense is intended. Denominal verbs often carry related but distinct meanings when used as verbs, compared with their noun senses, yet they retain the same form.

The phenomenon is often described more broadly as conversion or functional shift in linguistic theory, and it highlights how English can reuse a single word across grammatical categories without morphological change. In discussions of language learning and word formation, nounverbs exemplify how meaning and function can evolve from context rather than from new derivational affixes.