Nouns into Intransitive Verbs-Hoover and Beaver

[Mark Mandel]

US, I'm sure. I don't think my Lower East Side mother-in-law, whose native
language was Yiddish and who came over from Poland shortly before the
Holocaust, would have been influenced by BrE. Come to think of it, I think
my maternal grandmother, born NYC 1891 of Russian Jewish immigrant parents,
used the same verb.

I immediately understood verb "beaver" as < the proverbial comparison "busy
as a beaver".

Mark Mandel


On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> At 7:52 PM +0000 2/1/09, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
> >Does this use of "hoover" derive from the UK use to mean ' vacuum'?
>
> Definitely, or a separate derivation resulting from the proliferation
> of Hoover v.c.s in this country too.  Not to be confused with the
> Hoovervilles that arose after the first stock market crash, which did
> not feature large numbers of vacuum cleaners.
>
> >  And why "beaver"? Are beavers more single-minded than any other krittir?
>
> They are to me at least by reputation; they're basically famous just
> for relentlessly building and rebuilding those dams.
>
>

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