Saturday, June 17, 2006

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.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

because 'verb-ized' is a word.

1:41 PM  
Blogger Jonathan Ball said...

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"

6:17 PM  
Blogger apk01004 said...

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.

6:17 PM  
Blogger apk01004 said...

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.

6:21 PM  
Blogger kaylen said...

maybe that's how you use hyphens. i use it for action!

and, he is already married. such is life.

9:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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.

8:55 AM  

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