QUOTE : Let me stop you. I don’t remember your entry on buried verbs. Is that what’s wrong? BAG: Yeah, I think they’re unduly abstract. DFW: But sometimes, obviously, if you’re referring to litigation, you’ve got to use the buried verb. BAG: Right, you can’t always say litigate. DFW: Then there’s always the—what do you call it?—buried nouns, like, “We need to dialogue about this,” “You gifted me with this,” which make my stomach hurt even more than the buried verbs. I guess those, a lot of those are more vogue words. BAG: Linguists call it functional shift, where you press a noun into service as a verb. Some kinds of functional shift are not so bothersome—using a noun as an adjective, “We’ve got a room problem here,” you know, that kind of thing. DFW: But you’re right, yeah, the noun-to-verb thing is more annoying in a vogue-word sense. But you’re right. Buried verbs are a quick way to turn a clean, elegant, simple clause into a clotted nightmare.