"Exhale" as a Noun

[labingi]

Silly question but when did "exhale" become a noun? I've been seeing it everywhere in fan fic lately, everywhere an "exhale," not one fic with an "exhalation"--or a "he exhaled." I figured it was a fan fic thing.

Then I saw an "exhale" in the poem "Forgotten Portraits," on my son's AP test study list.

The dictionaries are pretty much still telling me "exhale" is a verb.

This is, of course, all my language snobbery and utterly irrelevant, but when did this happen? What memo did I miss?

Comments

[labingi]

Interesting. I don't often notice that one. Is it more common in NZ? I don't think you need to feel any pressure to change your own dialect; that's the point of language rights movements, isn't it? :)

[vilakins]

I hear it here sometimes, more often in the UK online (friends, FB groups etc), and very often in dialogue in UK and some US novels. It surprised me about US novels did it too as I'd originally assumed it was a UK thing. Greg does it all the time and I'm not sure where he picked it up as he doesn't do social media or read novels. He likes lots of US podcasts and videos that have coloured his language, but this one is odd. I've seen and heard it so much in the last 10 years or so, I'm sure that it's language change in action.

[labingi]

Interesting. I'm pondering my students' discourse, and it may be that I just don't see many sentences discussing two pronouns as a subject: "Him and me went...." I do get a lot of "Me and my sister went...."

Language, it's a funny old thing, huh?

[vilakins]

Actually it would be "me and him" because the first person comes first these days, instead of the polite second I was taught at school (he and I, her and me) - another big difference. It makes me feel a bit obsolete. I enjoy language innovation and neologisms, but object/subject swap is just wrong and illogical.