Our modern verb 'escalate' was then, and for a long time to come, unknown, but had a predecessor in a noun now rare, 'escalade'; both words are derived from the Latin word for a ladder, scala.
Like Hoover and Google, Shazam is that rare instance where a proper noun becomes a verb – but that can only carry you so far in terms of building a viable business.
In the other Indo-European languages, apart from rare exceptions in Scandinavian languages, nouns and verbs are never identical because of the necessity of separate noun and verb endings.
Prefixes and suffixes are relatively rare, and the plurality of nouns and verb tenses is usually indicated by the syntax of a statement.
Therefore, clauses where all participants are expressed as free-standing noun phrases are rather rare.
To use that word as a noun these days is so rare as to require clarification: I'm talking about photographic negatives, the technology that a decade ago, in my Introductory Photography class, we still used.
While most English nouns do not require classifiers or measure words (except in rare cases like "five cattle"), nearly all Chinese nouns do; thus, in the first table, phrases that have no classifier in English have one in Chinese.
Grammatical agreement is rare: quantifying words do not agree with the noun ('two man'), and there is no agreement of the adjective with the noun in gender, case, or number.
Although unicorns are rare mythical beasts, surprisingly there is a collective noun for them: a "blessing of unicorns".
"What's a group noun for suitors?" asks Lady Rose in the new episode of Downton Abbey, in a rare display of wit.
Grammatical case markers on nouns the word elements that indicate the role of a noun or pronoun in a phrase, clause, or sentence— are absent from nearly all Mesoamerican languages, with rare exceptions.
