There is a children's book by Kumon entitled "Let's Sticker & Paste". So I was wondering if "sticker" in this title is a verb. If so, does it sound natural to say "Let's sticker"?
Thanks in advance.
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It doesn't sound grammatical in this context. Are you sure they didn't say 'let's stick...[er] and paste'? (As in a pause, rather than '-er')– marcellothearcaneJul 21, 2017 at 7:29
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Thank you. It's a workbook for children by Kumon Publishing North America. The title is "Let's Sticker & Paste!" I am quite confused.– user247774Jul 21, 2017 at 7:49
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Ah, then maybe it's a pun - a common expression is 'stick and paste' but since they're 'stickers' they have replaced 'stick' with 'sticker'.– marcellothearcaneJul 21, 2017 at 7:50
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Please show your research.– Arm the good guys in AmericaJul 21, 2017 at 10:16
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I wonder if they're using sticker as a verb meaning to stick stickers because stick and paste would seem to mean glue and glue and seem silly.– Chris HJul 22, 2017 at 10:06
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3 Answers
The OED has sticker as a transitive verb, with these quotations:
- trans. To affix a sticker or stickers to (something).
1912 Reveille (Rolfe, Iowa) 18 July 1/1 The towns to be visited, placarded,..and stickered.
1966 T. McNally Things go Bump in A. H. Ballet Playwrights for Tomorrow I. 226 The steamer trunks stickered ten times over with those magic names.
1976 Publishers Weekly 29 Mar. 41/1 The titles are produced by Dent in London. Dutton warehouses its inventory in this country and the titles are stickered for the U.S. market here.
1990 Egg Sept. 53/1 We started stickering our stuff and calling up record store managers and alerting clerks not to sell our records to minors.
2006 T. Anderson Riding Magic Carpet (2008) vii. 255 As the bus wove its way through the town, every signpost was stickered with surf labels
Nevertheless, I think "let's sticker" alone sounds odd. "Let's sticker the cars" (e.g., with bumper stickers promoting something) sounds less strange, because there is an object for this transitive verb.
Yes, of course the word sticker can be used as a verb. It would however be unacceptable in formal writing, but only because it is not commonly used as a verb yet.
Let me clarify: English is littered with verbs which, like flotsam, have drifted from having once being nouns exclusively. The process is called verbing and is as old as our language itself. It reflects the organic nature of language and particularly of English because, unlike most other languages, the base form of our verbs do not change. Verbs converted from nouns are all regular and the past forms have an -ed ending. Both the words rain and thunder were once used only as nouns.
More recently we've been gifted (ha ha) words like texting, Facebooking and jawing. So yes, lets get together and sticker!
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A literary flourish at the end of a post is well appreciated here. Thank you ... Jul 21, 2017 at 23:21
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Re rain and thunder - I'm not sure when you were talking about, but the OED has an example of the verb rain from the Lindisfarne Gospels, published around 700CE.– WS2Jul 22, 2017 at 7:09
The word "sticker" is a noun derived from verb "to stick" . Yet, the author can prefer to use the tittle , would be clear may be after you read the book