Is it the definite article?
So, to reiterate, when it comes to when to use the “the”, the only universal rule is this:
Some rules (such as the two you’ve given) might hold 95%+ of the time, but unfortunately there may be weird and arbitrary exceptions that you’ll just have to learn.
Is it capitalization?
Because a cursory look at the Wikipedia page for capitalization also reveals that it is not without its quirks.
For example:
planets and other celestial bodies: “Jupiter”, “the Crab Nebula”; and “the Earth”, “the Sun”, or “the Moon” should be capitalized according to the International Astronomical Union based on its manual of style, but style guides may suggest differently.[19]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization_in_English
Is it the fact the way something is written almost has no bearing on how it’s pronounced?
Please tell me your thoughts.
You can verb pretty much any noun you like and get away with it, when used in such a manner the verbnoun takes on the typical action of the noun.
“Gunned down” is an example.
It’s so prevalent we can literally say “I’ll verb your noun” and it still gets the point across.
It’s possible to do so in other languages as well, we rarely need to because we have other words for things though.
In my experience, nouns and verbs are generally strictly separate concepts in Romance languages, making this not viable, although there are exceptions.
You might not be a native to Roman languages, but it’s very easy to “vebify” a word for natives just like you would in English.
Tell me a noun you think can be verbed in English but not in Roman languages and I’ll give you an example of how it looks like.