Language Crank

Turning nouns into verbs is an often useful practice that has a long and honorable history in English. For example, a few decades ago we made "parent" into "to parent," and that has worked well. For women, the word has a different emphasis than "to mother." And for men, "to father" has a completely different meaning. But I can't see any reason to make "reference" into "to reference" when we already have "to refer to," except to annoy those of us whom it strikes as incorrect. Perhaps the usage has an academic or bureaucratic origin, because I don't hear it from the uneducated rabble, but mostly from radio and tv commentators and their newsmaking interviewees. In a phrase such as "...the law she______earlier in her remarks...," they feel compelled to insert "referenced" rather than "spoke about," "mentioned," "explained," "expounded upon," "alluded to," or other possibilities that might give more precision and linguistic variety to their commentaries.