Does Nature Verb?

One of my passions is studying language, and some time ago I spent four years researching the pieces and processes that shape English, then wrote a book called Language Making Nature about creating new words to speak of the natural world.

However, I've recently found myself asking an important question: Where are the verbs that speak of nature?!

The natural world is incredibly important and has been a huge inspiration for countless generations of poets, thinkers, and writers, but for the life of me I find myself struggling to think of a single nature-based verb—by which I mean any verb used solely and specifically to speak about some aspect of the natural world.

Of course, we use many types of verbs to speak about the natural world, but the more I dig into this question, the more I realize that none of these verbs are uniquely focused on the natural world. Verbs like bloom, rain, flow, sprout, and fly can be used to speak of nature, but they are just as easily applied to humans or other uses, so I wouldn't call them "nature verbs."

So, what are verbs and why are they important? Verbs are the parts of speech that convey an action or a state of being, in other words, these are the words that add life and essence to the objects (nouns) of the world. Aristotle makes the additional distinction that verbs signify time in a way that nouns cannot, which might be another way of highlighting how verbs bring life to our world.

I have several bookcases of technical language books and dictionaries of the world's languages, so I spent two days looking for evidence of nature verbs in English and other related languages. What I discovered is that, across the board, there seem to be two major trends: verbs are either human-centric, and/or they are used in the most general way possible.

Consider a verb like eat, which is so vague and broad that it can be easily used for almost any type of real or metaphorical action. And even when we use a verb to speak of nature, for example, if we say that an animal "makes" a nest, we are inclined to imagine the action as a type of human activity.

In a book called Making New Words, R.M.W. Dixon provides an extensive appendix listing all the categories of verbs and every example he lists refers to human action and life. I looked through A Scots Dictionary of Nature by Amanda Thomson because she examines the words of a deeply rural, land-based culture, and every verb I found (except gloam, "the coming of twilight") applies to working the land and running a farm rather than the natural world. This was also true for the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (my favorite form of English), which, with very rare exceptions, focuses entirely on verbs related to human activities like fishing, trapping, and hunting. And a book examining Gaelic words for the natural world, called Reading the Gaelic Landscape, by John Murray, doesn't mention verbs at all.

If nature verbs exist, or matter, in the human imagination, you would think that thousands of years of human creativity would have come up with countless examples. And yes, there might be a few verbs I haven't thought of, but why is it so hard to think of any, and why is English almost entirely (if not entirely?!) devoid of nature verbs?

It is often said that English is a noun-based language with a focus on objects and a desire to manipulate and use objects for human gain. In contrast, it is said that many indigenous languages are verb-based, with up to 70% of their words being verbs that focus on living properties rather than inert objects (consider this famous essay, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, on the grammar of animacy).

This distinction points to the fact that nature verbs can, and almost certainly should, exist in a language. However, English seems to be missing this vital way of seeing the world, which seems like a huge loss—as well as a tremendous opportunity.

In Practice

You can stop here if you want, but I'm not satisfied simply making this point. I want to find solutions, and I'm eager to play with language. If we need nature verbs then let's have fun creating them!

I believe there are many good reasons to have verbs with a broad range of uses, because this gives us room to be creative. For example, if we can say that the ocean sparkles and someone's personality sparkles this gives us a chance to make fun connections between different ideas. But I also feel there are equally good reasons to have unique, and highly specific, verbs that connect us to deeper nuances of the natural world.

While English has numerous ways of creating new adjectives and nouns, it has fewer ways of creating new verbs, though one common solution is to create verbs from nouns. For example, you can easily add prefixes (e.g. em-bitter) or suffixes (e.g. sweet-en or hospital-ize) to create verbs. Or you can simply turn nouns and adjectives into verbs by using them as verbs (e.g. snare, nose, dry, calm).

You could also create nature verbs by adding prefixes to existing verbs, following the model of modified verbs like un-mask, out-last, over-take, or under-value, then use the new words to speak of nature.

Another option might be to change a vowel to turn an existing verb, noun, or adjective into a new word, much like we do with verbs like sing, sang, sung.

Finally, while I find these approaches interesting, I am far more fascinated in the potential of inventing new words entirely, or re-using old forgotten words in new ways, or using words in highly inventive ways. These might be silly examples off the top of my head, but I love making up new words like bone-see, tree-climb, or star-glint, or thinking creatively with phrases like "sunlight feathered the land."

Nature is always living and being, with every plant, animal, and part of the landscape vibrantly alive in some special and unique way. So, why do we label this astonishing life energy with vague, human-centric verbs when we have this fun and highly creative opportunity to name the world with new verbs?

In the comments below, let me know what you think of this idea or if you can think of nature-based verbs that I'm overlooking. This is an evolving topic and I'm not done thinking about it yet.