635: voracity and voraciousness Sep 3, 2016

The same word can easily become a noun, verb, and adjective in English, evidenced with the example from Hulu ads, the slogan "come TV with us" uses 'TV' as a verb (separate in meaning also from 'televise'). Likewise, there are many different affixes that indicate that a word is being used in a different part of speech. 'Voracious' does not have a verbal derivative, but the '-ous' was used to make the original Latin verb an adjective. There are many nounal suffixes in English, and therefore more than one way to make something into a noun. The earliest form of 'voracious' as a noun was 'voracity' appearing in print in the 1530's. Around a century later 'voraciousness', was being used, because it is easier to grasp.