It isn't always a pretty sight when one part of speech gets turned into another.

The word access was a good, precise noun for many centuries before computers came along, and then it became a verb.

Did we just get too busy to say “get access to”? Most people can live with access as a verb, though some language freaks still avoid it—more out of distaste than rectitude.

The word contact is different. Perhaps, as means of human communication multiplied, we went for the generic rather than saying, at the end of a business letter, “Please feel free to write, telephone, email, fax, messenger, text-message or Skype me...” (And yes, in that sentence text-message and messenger are function-shift words as well. So it goes.)

Then there is impact as a transitive verb. We didn’t need it: we had affect and act on and bear on, and if these terms are too wussy for our speedy data-bombardment era, we can always turn to destroy, devastate and their relatives. But usage becomes correct, or at least acceptable, when lots of people do it, and so impact has been promoted.

Recently I read a passage in which light and colour kaleidoscoped out of control. That is something up with which the Canadian Oxford Dictionary will not yet put.