Presto, Change-o, You're a Verb!

Lest I should ever worry that I will find a dearth of silliness in the Star Tribune, I will remind myself to turn to the Sports section. On page C5 of today’s paper I found a glorious little nugget of folly nestled into a story written by La Velle E. Neal, “Halladay’s Twins hex halted by Pavano”.

He writes: “Pavano doesn’t miss bats like Halladay can; he is going to have company on the bases. But Pavano can Houdini his way out of jams, like in the fifth inning when a run was in and Travis Snider was on third with one out.”

I understand the image Mr. Neal is trying to conjure up here, but I just have to point out that Houdini is not a verb. Houdini is a noun. Houdini is a noun because Houdini is the name of a person, and a noun is a person, place, or thing. A verb, on the other hand, is an action. A person, such as Harry Houdini, is not, in and of himself, an action. He performs actions.

The above quote could have been written like this: “Pavano can, like the great magician Harry Houdini, extricate himself from tight spaces.”

I will admit that one of the unique and charming characteristics of the English language is that it allows nouns to be turned into verbs:

“They cornered him.”
“She stonewalled.”
“I’ll brain you!”

However, in this case, turning Houdini into a verb (Presto, change-o, you’re a verb!) just seems like lazy writing to me. It sounds like a frat boy saying, “Dude, that chick tried to Facebook me, but I totally Houdinied my way out of it.”

I'm surprised the story didn't end like this: "And then, after Joe Nathan earned his 38th save in the ninth inning, he turned to Pavano and asked, 'Pavano...where's my car?'"