On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 8:37 AM Felipe Contreras
[off-list ref] wrote:

Take for example the word "calibration". It is a noun, but you can't
point to any calibration thing. It comes from the verb calibrating,
and such conversions are called nominalizations.

I'm currently re-reading The Sense of Style, and it's interesting that
in Chapter 2 Steven Pinker mentions precisely these nouns, which he
calls "zombie nouns". They certainly do exist, and people use them,
but they suck the lifeblood out of prose. Take for example
"comprehension checks were used as exclusion criteria" (zombie nouns),
compared to "we excluded people who failed to understand the
instructions" (live verbs).

Actually I found this video, which is more digestible and enjoyable:

Zombie Nouns and the Passive Voice in Writing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS-Txm3R3v8

-- 
Felipe Contreras