What is a made-up verb?
Is a made-up verb is the other name for phrasal verb? and if not what it means?
3 Answers
Google is a made-up verb. Google it. I don't know what "phrasal" verb means.
A phrasal verb is a verb whose meaning is modified or changed completely by adding a preposition to it in some manner.
Consider the non-phrasal verb "turn" which, by itself, means to twist or spin. Below are some examples of "turn" being used as part of a phrasal verb with various prepositions.
Turn on = power on, suddenly act aggressively toward, incite desire
Turn off = power off, incite disgust
Turn in = go to bed for the night
Turn up = increase in intensity (usually: increase volume on the TV or radio)
A made-up verb is a verb that is not considered part of our standard vocabulary. In English, one can make up a verb by adding certain suffixes (sometimes with prefixes, too) to non-verbs. A common suffix we use for this is -ify. For example, I can make the color red into a verb...redify...which would mean "to increase the redness of." I could then add the prefix de- and make deredify...meaning "to decrease the redness of." Making up verbs is only done in casual conversation...not in formal documents or reports.
Sometimes, like in the case of Google, we begin to associate a non-verb so much with a certain action that we just begin to use the word (usually a noun) for the action itself. So, we got tired of saying "Let me search for that on Google" and eventually just started saying "Let me google that," which we say even if we don't use Google as our search engine. To google means "to use an internent search engine to search for {something}." Occasionally, this becomes so common that will eventually become part of our standard vocabulary.
Some more stuff on made-up verbs...it's called verbing.
