Anthimeria Examples: Using Words as Different Parts of Speech

Anthimeria (also called antimeria) is the deliberate use of a word as a different part of speech than its conventional form. A noun becomes a verb. An adjective becomes a noun. A verb becomes an adjective. The word keeps its core meaning but gains a new grammatical identity — and in the process, something fresh and vivid happens.

You do this constantly without realizing it. When you say "Google it," you are using a proper noun as a verb. When you say "that's a big ask," you are using a verb as a noun. When someone tells you to "adult" or "people," they are verbing nouns. Anthimeria is one of the most natural and productive processes in English — and one of the most powerful tools a writer can use to create language that feels alive.

The term comes from the Greek anti ("against" or "instead") and meros ("part"), meaning "one part for another." It has been a staple of English writing since at least Shakespeare, who was its greatest practitioner.

Shakespeare: The Master of Anthimeria

No writer in English has used anthimeria more brilliantly or more frequently than Shakespeare. He turned nouns into verbs, verbs into nouns, and adjectives into everything else — often coining words that are still in use today. Scholars estimate Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words, and many of those inventions came through anthimeria. Here are some of his most famous examples.

How Anthimeria Works: Verbing, Nouning, and Beyond

Anthimeria moves in several directions. The most common shifts are nouns becoming verbs ("verbing") and verbs becoming nouns ("nouning"), but any part-of-speech swap counts.

Noun → Verb (Verbing)

The most common form of anthimeria. English makes this easy because verbs and nouns often share the same form. "Hammer" is both a thing and an action. "Email" was a noun before it was a verb. "Bookmark," "microwave," "elbow," "shoulder," "table," "chair" — all nouns that became verbs through usage. In creative writing, verbing creates immediacy: "She elbowed through the crowd" is more vivid than "she pushed through the crowd using her elbows."

Verb → Noun (Nouning)

"That was a good find." "It's a big ask." "Let's go for a run." "She had a good cry." In each case, a verb becomes the thing itself. This creates a sense of the action as a complete, contained event — a "find" is more final than "something I found," and a "cry" is more intimate than "the act of crying."

Adjective → Noun

"The poor," "the beautiful," "the absurd." Using adjectives as nouns elevates the quality to a category or concept. It is common in philosophical and literary writing. "She was drawn to the strange" hits differently than "she was drawn to strange things" — the adjective-as-noun makes strangeness feel like a force rather than a list of items.

Adjective → Verb

"Don't dirty your shoes." "He emptied the glass." "She braved the storm." Here, adjectives ("dirty," "empty," "brave") become verbs, compressing an action and its quality into a single word. "She braved the storm" carries the weight of courage inside the verb itself.

Modern Anthimeria in Everyday Language

Anthimeria is not a relic of Elizabethan English — it is happening constantly in contemporary language. Technology, social media, and pop culture drive new part-of-speech shifts every year.

Anthimeria in Literature and Poetry

Beyond Shakespeare, anthimeria appears throughout literary history. E.E. Cummings was a relentless experimenter with parts of speech, writing lines like "he sang his didn't" and "anyone lived in a pretty how town" — turning adverbs and pronouns into nouns and adjectives. The effect is disorienting and beautiful, forcing the reader to feel meaning rather than parse it logically.

Sylvia Plath used anthimeria for visceral effect: "The blood jet is poetry." Here, "jet" operates simultaneously as noun and metaphorical verb, collapsing the image of arterial spray and creative output into a single word. In Toni Morrison's work, characters "memory" things rather than "remember" them — a nouned verb that carries the weight of embodied, involuntary recall rather than the clinical act of recollecting.

Contemporary poets like Ocean Vuong continue the tradition: "Don't worry. Your father is only your father / until one of you forgets. Like how the spine / won't remember its wings." The verb "forgets" does standard work, but "wings" carries the ghost of a verb (winging, flying) that haunts the noun, creating a dual resonance that is anthimeria's signature gift to poetry.

Why Anthimeria Creates Freshness in Writing

It compresses meaning

"She elbowed through the crowd" says in one verb what would otherwise take a prepositional phrase. "He porched himself all afternoon" (Faulkner) captures both the location and the laziness of the action. Anthimeria is inherently economical — it collapses description into action, or action into a thing, eliminating the need for extra words.

It surprises the reader

The brain expects certain words to behave in certain ways. When a noun suddenly acts as a verb, there is a micro-moment of recalibration — a tiny cognitive surprise that makes the reader pay closer attention. This is what makes anthimeria feel "fresh." The word is familiar; its grammatical role is not. The combination creates novelty without obscurity.

It reveals character voice

Characters who verb nouns sound different from characters who speak in standard grammar. A teenager who says "I can't even adult today" speaks a different language than a professor who says "I find the responsibilities of maturity challenging." Both convey the same meaning, but the anthimeria version carries personality, informality, and generational identity.

It creates new meanings

Sometimes, no existing word captures what you need. "To ghost someone" (disappear without explanation) did not have a single-word verb equivalent before anthimeria created one. "To gaslight," "to stonewall," "to grandstand" — all anthimeria-born verbs that fill gaps in the language. When you encounter a moment in your writing where the right verb does not exist, consider creating it through anthimeria.

Tips for Using Anthimeria in Your Writing

Make the meaning clear from context

Anthimeria only works if the reader can instantly understand the new usage. "She porched herself" works because the context (a house, an afternoon, idleness) makes "porched" immediately legible. If the reader has to stop and puzzle out your meaning, the device has failed. The word's original meaning should illuminate, not obscure, its new grammatical role.

Use it sparingly

One brilliant anthimeria per page can electrify your prose. Five on every page starts to feel like a gimmick. The device works because it breaks a pattern — but if the pattern-breaking itself becomes the pattern, the effect is lost. Save anthimeria for moments when standard grammar genuinely cannot carry the weight of what you are trying to say.

Match it to your narrator's voice

A formal, precise narrator using sudden anthimeria creates a jarring, often comic effect. A playful, colloquial narrator using anthimeria feels natural. Make sure the device fits the voice. Shakespeare could put anthimeria in any character's mouth because his entire linguistic register allowed it. In contemporary fiction, it needs to feel organic to the speaker.

Related Literary Device Guides

• 100+ Simile Examples for Writers →
• Zeugma: One Word, Multiple Meanings →
• Malapropism: When Characters Mangle Words →
• Portmanteau: Blending Words for Effect →