why i must marry this man
myself:
really, what bothers you about "utilize"?
this man:
"Use" is a verb. "Utility" is the related noun. "Utilize" is a word
that used to be verb, that was turned into a noun, that was then
verb-ized again.
really, what bothers you about "utilize"?
this man:
"Use" is a verb. "Utility" is the related noun. "Utilize" is a word
that used to be verb, that was turned into a noun, that was then
verb-ized again.
posted by kaylen at 6:32 PM
6 Comments:
because 'verb-ized' is a word.
my pet peeve, which is somewhat word-related, is when people STAND on the ESCALATOR. you are supposed to WALK up them, so that it ESCALATES your progress!!! it makes me furious!!! everytime i am somewhere that has an escalator, I get enraged.
also, when people say "literally" when they mean "figuratively"
I don't know. I think the hyphen is intended to convey that "verbize" is not correct. Usually we only use hypens in that way when we are self-conciously indicating that what we are saying is not a word.
Actually "escalate" is a back-formation from "escalator", which is a trademark. I did not know this until I looked it up.
If I had to guess I would say that "escalator" came from the French or some other Romance language for "stairs", on which you can stand still if you are so inclined.
maybe that's how you use hyphens. i use it for action!
and, he is already married. such is life.
in a romance language like spanish,(italian too? latin?) the letter 's' cannot be followed by a stop unless preceded by a vowel. this leads to spanish words like 'escuela'(school), and 'estufa' (stove). Perhaps, more relevently, the spanish word for 'stairs' is 'escalas'. the most important thing to note, as far as i am concerned, is that all of this probably results from the etymological history surroinding the word 'scale'. In its verbiest sense 'scale' is a synonym for 'climb', and climbing is exactly what stairs and escalas, and escalators are all good at doing.
on a more personal note, i have never approved of the use of hyphens to create new words. they are too ugly.
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