Frank Cook finds it odd that ask is replacing request as a noun.
This is a general thing in English of late, and it’s about starting over.
Think of an earlier example that no one seems to have noticed — using “a dissolve” in filmmaking when the pedant might say that the noun form of dissolve is dissolution. Dissolution is indeed a word, but it doesn’t mean, in actual usage, only the dissolving — it implies something negative, something you’d rather have stayed intact that went to pieces. “Dissolve” cleans away that gunk, and expresses simple dissolving.