Verb

"Higgs Boson" was a contender. So were "superstorm," "Super PAC" and "YOLO" (an acronym that stands for You Only Live Once).  But Katherine Martin, head of the U.S. dictionaries program at Oxford University Press USA,  said that when it came time for her team of lexicographers to pick the word of the year, the choice was obvious. It had to be GIF, the verb.  " GIF   verb  to create a GIF file of (an image or video sequence, especially relating to an event):  he GIFed the highlights of the debate.

"Higgs Boson" was a contender. So were "superstorm," "Super PAC" and "YOLO" (an acronym that stands for You Only Live Once).  But Katherine Martin, head of the U.S. dictionaries program at Oxford University Press USA,  said that when it came time for her team of lexicographers to pick the word of the year, the choice was obvious. It had to be GIF, the verb.  " GIF   verb  to create a GIF file of (an image or video sequence, especially relating to an event):  he GIFed the highlights of the debate.

Strawberry's back. It doesn't make any difference if it's the possessive form or the noun/verb, the answer is the same: So? DON KUMFERMAN Ridgecrest

Something funny happened to Eric Decker on the way to the end zone. The Denver receiver was wide open when he caught a deep pass from Peyton Manning midway through the second quarter of the Broncos' game against the San Diego Chargers on "Monday Night Football. " With no one near him, Decker took off for what appeared to be a sure touchdown - except he tripped over apparently nothing and landed on the ground. It might be the only time a 55-yard gain has been considered embarrassing, since it should have been an 85-yard touchdown.

Your article on the German language failed to quote Mark Twain's best comment: "Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth." GEORGE W. FEINSTEIN Altadena

I find it hard to believe that the author of the otherwise delightful article, a professor of English at San Diego State University, would substitute a noun ("lead") for the past tense of the verb "to lead" in his headline. Clarite M. Turner Rancho Palos Verdes Editor's note: The mistake was ours, not that of writer Jerry Griswold.

The sun the sun comes round the corner like a shining knight of old galloping over the landscape on the horses of morning And shaking his lance over us in trance of night awakens us to speak or sing to banish death and darkness And each steed a word each verb a stallion reared up against all ignorance Untamed rampant radicals in dictionaries of light

President Harding may have coined bloviate and H. L. Mencken may be the source of Webster III's entry, but both are unlikely. Harding may have found the word in that great compilation of slanguage, J. S. Farmer and W. E. Henley's (F&H) "Slang and Its Analogues," published between 1890 and 1904. The word is defined as: "verb (American) To talk aimlessly and boastingly; to indulge in 'high falutin'. (A facetious word probably founded on the verb BLOW, sense 1, on the model of 'deviate.

Although a liberal bias has been ascribed to The Times countless times by readers in your circulation area, I am compelled to respond to yet another example of your ideological bent. In your March 13 article about Rep. Loretta Sanchez's new abortion strategy, you use a form of the verb "attack" [two] times in describing the actions of the congresswoman's opponents. Perhaps I have missed them, but I do not recall reading any articles in The Times that have reported on "attacking" perpetrated by liberals on conservatives.

Verbs rule. Nouns are static, adverbs and adjectives dependent, and the rest--articles, conjunctions and their ilk--are the twist ties of communication. So when a noun becomes a verb, it says something about the significance of the thing that the noun names. In Los Angeles, open-house is a verb. "We open-housed Silver Lake yesterday," says the man in the tiny aquamarine sunglasses over vegetarian sandwiches, hold the avocado, at Say Cheese. "Way too many cinder blocks and cedar shingles."

As outdoor herb gardens perk up with spring, resist the temptation to rush out to harvest the new leaves. Let your garden grow. Instead, take a moment to revisit cooking with dried herbs. Contrary to conventional wisdom, fresh isn't always better. As proof, witness the heaping pile of salami, provolone, lettuce, radicchio, onion, pepperoncini and garbanzo beans known as Nancy's Chopped Salad at Pizzeria Mozza.

Tracing the evolution of English verbs over 1,200 years -- from the Old English of "Beowulf" to the modern English of "The Princess Diaries" -- researchers have found that the majority of irregular verbs are going the way of Grendel, falling to the linguistic equivalent of natural selection. The irregular verbs, governed by confusing and antiquated rules, came under evolutionary pressure to obey the modern "-ed" rule of regular verb conjugation, according to a report today in the journal Nature.

I am appalled at the hoopla of media attention being given Jane Fonda and her new book ["No Ordinary Jane," by Susan Salter Reynolds, April 5]. Fine, perhaps she has some excuse from her upbringing that resulted in a tempestuous lifestyle, but neither that nor devoting an entire chapter to her trip to Hanoi with a couple of mea culpas makes everything all right. Fonda states that her "awakening" period in the '60s was like changing from a "noun to a verb." In this household, she is still considered an "expletive."

Help! Desperate writers have commandeered "hijack." Best used to describe what mobsters do to trucks and pirates do to ships, hijack has lately been forced to portray all manner of dull activity. In major U.S. newspapers, the word was contorted in 43% of its 2,202 recent appearances. Things hijacked in 2004 included trials, meetings, foreign policy, elections, President Reagan's legacy, cable news, two chapters of a book on autism, Broadway musicals and the moral high ground.

By now it's well established that bird-watching is one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic outdoor pursuits in the United States, but you'd never know it by looking at the rather staid genre of bird literature. Whether you pick up one of the countless field guides or tales of "my great birding adventure," you stop paying attention after a while, because the language is as interesting as having oatmeal every morning.

The sun the sun comes round the corner like a shining knight of old galloping over the landscape on the horses of morning And shaking his lance over us in trance of night awakens us to speak or sing to banish death and darkness And each steed a word each verb a stallion reared up against all ignorance Untamed rampant radicals in dictionaries of light

My exploration of a recent aberration of the young--use of the verb to go as a synonym for to say-- seems to have divided readers into those who applaud or condone such novelties and those who deplore them. The usage is, or was, common in casual conversation. An example offered by Kenneth Green, counselor at Cal Poly Pomona: "So when he told me he had to break our date, I go, 'Look, I'm getting tired of being treated like this.' He goes, 'I can't help it.' " Tom Downer Jr. of Manhattan Beach affirms the observation of his friend, Bob Brigham, that the usage is already obsolete; Downer says it has been replaced by the even more deplorable use of all as a verb meaning to say. "Where this came from I have no idea," he says.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work. --Carl Sandburg Whatever! They come and go like the tide, these words and phrases that become a kind of second language for many children. Yesterday's grody becomes today's whack. What was once tubular and def is now dope and righteous. Below is a list of some current slang. * as if, exclamation. "To the contrary," "No way." audi, exclamation.

In every human thought and reflection, there is a word. For Paul Sailer, the essence of all his words is concealed in the cells along a pastel furrow of brain tissue behind his ear, just to the left of the surgeon's probe. On this day, Sailer, 32, lies on an operating table with his head clamped firmly in a surgical vise, in a subbasement of the UCLA Medical Center. His skull is open. His brain pulses as he breathes. The exposed tissue steams in the cool dry air.

When we look at the culinary developments that have helped make food preparation easier over the last century, the introduction of packaged cake mix usually doesn't top the list. Other time-savers, like the microwave oven, food processor and electric mixer, come to mind. Or consider the frozen, instant and canned "convenience" foods of the 1950s, the advent of aerosol products containing cooking spray or whipped cream and the burgeoning fast-food industry.