Greetings, all! It’s been a regular whirlwind here at Maven Central. Phone calls, appointments, and all manner of other fun and exciting things have been going on. Such a schedule can be hard on a gal if she’s not prepared. Luckily for your Style Maven, there are dandy reversible pieces for the wardrobe that can double as work wear and play clothes. Language often follows, er, suit when it comes to double duty. Words that spend many years as nouns gradually take on verb status. Words like husband , or Google , or the recently fashionable mainstream leap to mind; I’m sure that you can think of plenty of examples yourself. This kind of shift is nothing new. Ages before beloved comic strip character Calvin described the fun of “verbing” words, speakers were bending language to fit their needs. The CMOS states that the word husband went from a noun to a verb somewhere between the years 1220 and 1420. Where there is language, there is bound to be change. Dialect ...

Jargon is the special language of each profession, sport or hobby. We can all spout words when talking about our current passion that make another person frown and say, “Huh?” When I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher years ago, I learned a completely new language that revolved around numbers. But even that wasn’t necessarily translatable by other law enforcement agencies. For example, in our community the code “211” meant there are no wants or warrants on an individual or license plate. We once received a call from a California agency, wondering how a small town in Montana could have so many armed robberies. Their code “211” meant robbery in progress. Jargon is sometimes merely doublespeak, and it is also often responsible for wordy, heavy-handed sentences. When it comes from government or business, we call it “bureaucratese.” It’s almost as if the writer has deliberately ignored every opportunity for clear, concise writing. Here’s an example : “The necessity for individuals to become separ...