The verb contact is a classic example of a verb that was made from a noun and of a new usage that was initially frowned upon. The noun meaning “the state or condition of touching” was introduced in 1626 by Francis Bacon. Some 200 years later it spawned a verb meaning “to bring or place in contact.” This sense of the verb has lived an unremarkable life in technical contexts. It was only in the first quarter of the 20th century that contact came to be used to mean “to communicate with,” and soon afterward the controversy began. Contact was declared to be properly a noun, not a verb—and besides, it was argued, as a verb it was vague.
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Neither of these arguments holds water. Turning nouns into verbs is one of the most frequent ways in which new verbs enter English. The examples are countless and familiar. Curb, date, elbow, head, interview, panic, park, and service are but a few. Contact is but another instance of what linguists call functional shift from one part of speech to another. As for contact’s vagueness, this seems a virtue in an age in which forms of communication have proliferated. The sentence We will contact you when the part comes in allows for a variety of possible ways to communicate: by mail, telephone, computer, or fax.
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But whatever you think of these issues, the main question is contact’ s acceptability in Standard English. It appears that the usefulness and popularity of this verb has worn down resistance to it. In 1969, only 34 percent of the Usage Panel accepted the use of contact as a verb, but in 1988, 65 percent of the panel accepted it in the sentence She immediately called an officer at the Naval Intelligence Service, who in turn contacted the FBI.
