Some time early in our relationship, my wife set down a plate or cup in front of me and said with indulgent and somewhat satiric glee, "you sit down an have an enjoy."
I thought that was hysterical for some reason, and it's been a watchword in our house for 40 years. I often try to fathom why it seems so funny, and get a grip on the intuition that led Cindy to manufacture a noun, enjoy, by accenting the first syllable of a common verb. My lingering association is with "escape" in Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, below (reproducing Guthrie's pronunciation):
After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put Us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your Wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my Wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you Want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I Said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?" Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the Toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the Toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape.
That's about as far as I got across the decades, until Sierra Club board director Dave Scott framed up an accidental pun on Twitter yesterday:
That opened the floodgates, and I've started a list of verbs that are nouns when accented on the first syllable (or, not to be too fussy, two-syllable verbs that are also nouns).Rage, rage against the dying of the light. https://t.co/MXoJrVHSXz
— Dave Scott (@DaveScottSC) November 26, 2021
object
— Dave Marshall (@dkmarsh) November 30, 2021
subject
suspect
affect
permit
imprint
impound
compound
…and of course,
rebel
I especially like ones where the noun and verb are not similar in meaning, like "entrance" and "incense."Also, add "insult" (though not to injury).
😊 On re-flection, I also en-joyed this.
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