Conversion

Conversion

Conversion, a very productive way of producing new words in English, is “ the derivational process whereby an item is adapted or converted to a new word class without the addition of an affix”.
For example:
Verbs to nouns: answer, doubt, love, smell.
Adjectives to nouns: daily (=daily newspaper), final (=final exam, final race, etc.), lovely (= a lovely girl)
Adjectives to verbs: calm, dirty, dry.