阅读理解。
It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We
all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.
I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, and
my friend said “You can ink it in”, meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!
Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology. An obvious example is the word fax,
which is a shortening of facsimile originally, an exact copy of a book or document. We all got used
to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising
we'd fax it immediately. So, nouns turn into verbs in two easy stages. Then along came email, and we
were soon all emailing each other madly. How did we do without it? I can hardly imagine life without
my daily emails.
Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and its software, which has produced another couple
of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think
I'll want to look at again, thus saving all the effort of remembering their addresses and calling them up
from scratch. I can do the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite-coming from
“favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun. I wasn’t really sure whether
people said this, but someone told me recently that they had favorited a site I was looking for and so
they could easily give me its address.
In the late 1980s I noticed that lots of my friends had acquired pagers, and kept saying things like
“I’ll page you as soon as I know what time we’re meeting”. They couldn't say it to me, though; I
refused to have one. So my children bought me a mobile phone, now known simply as a mobile and
I had to learn yet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message （either
spoken or written）for them on their phone．Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when
and where to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, that is, phone them
using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Perhaps I’ll start using it myself!
1. “I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means .
A. it was a firm arrangement
B. it was an uncertain arrangement
C. the arrangement should be written as a diary
D. he prefers a pencil to a pen
2. A website address can be easily found if it has been .
A. emailed
B. messaged
C. favorited
D. texted
3. Which of the following has not been used as a verb yet?
A. message
B. page
C. email
D. mobile
4. The best title for this passage is ．
A. New Verbs from Old Nouns
B. The Development of the English language
C. New Technology and New words
D. Technology and Language
