Steffie,

Thanks for the clarification. This is certainly the best defense for the irksome 'utilize' that I've ever seen. It does sort of suggest that the word may be developing its own meaning, and perhaps one day the bastard child of the self-aggrandizing and their own poor language will grow up to be a solid, honest part of any respectable vocabulary.

For the time being, though, I think even the example you quote shows that 'use' and 'utilize' are functionally the same word. The sentence with the teachers is just an ambiguous statement. Maybe a little bit of the ambiguity can be resolved in the verb choice, but no matter which word you choose, you still need context to clarify. If the sentence preceding the example were 'Our tuition was wasted on our fucking Luddite teachers,' the meaning is nice and clear, regardless of whether you then follow with 'use' or 'utilize'. Similarly, if the sentence after the example were 'The Amish kids just looked at their mentors with terror in their eyes,' the inherent vagary of the example vanishes, whether you use 'utilize,' or you utilize 'use.'

In any case, I'm not as much of a prig as I sounded at the party, or in the last paragraph. I love new words, and applaud the inexorable march of language into the future. I'm quite proud, for instance, that a British interviewer recently credited me with coining all three of these adjectives in the space of a half hour: balladiful, superdifficult, and soppy-pants. My point, the other night, was just that I like when new words are born of a desire to say new things, instead of a desire to inject stuffy pretension into one's statements. The guy who invented 'utilize' was clearly an asshole.

Damian

damian, you leave the amish out of this... my vocabulary is lacking, so before my visit to dictionary.com i thought you two were discusing how to utilitze (definition 3 b of utility) an office (hey, office and officious have five of the same letters, anyone could of made that mistake... right?!?) well, now that i've used all the existing words in my vocab and embarrassed myself, i shall leave having contributed nothing to the argument...

soppy-pants, is quiet mabey the best word ive heard this week

i age that utilize is made redundent by use..i dont think ive ever used the world utilize...mabey cause im a simple person

origin of use:[Middle English usen, from Old French user, from Vulgar Latin usare, frequentative of Latin uti. N., Middle English from Old French us, from Latin usus, from past participle of uti.] (from dictionary.com)

origin of utilize:[French utiliser, from Italian utilizzare, from utile, useful, from Latin utilis, from uti, to use.] (also from dictionary.com)

now, at this period in time, the two terms may indeed be completely synonymous, but utilize came into english through italian for useful as well as the expected french. use only came through french and latin, although the original latin verb is the same in both cases. therefore, unless the italians are particularly pompous, i do not see any reason for hating utilize and liking use. they both came through different origins, it is the same as synonyms from the latin and german roots of english.
also, I would like to point out a note from the entry on use- "Utilize is especially appropriate in the narrower sense of making something profitable or of finding new and practical uses for it: Waterpower was once widely utilized to generate electricity." therefore, i believe utilize has an unbelievably narrower meaning deriving from its italian ancestor meaning useFUL.

however, nowadays all this persnickity-ness is probably all for nothing because the difference is too slight to consider and Damian probably is right, that in today's society having two separate words is useless.

I would also like to point out that if you were writing an essay and used the word use excessively it would probably be useful to have an easy synonym so as not to SOUND redundant, even if you really are.

wow. I too appear to be a language geek. hooray.

-Margaret-et-et-et-et.

Damian, if your day job doesn't go so well in the future (and I really hope that your day job never fails because that would be a vile day for us all), you should become my English teacher.

So much for my clever comment . . . ha.

Damian, as a lyricist, you do REALIZE that you can UTILIZE the pronunciation and syllable count in "utilize" differently than the pronunciation and syllable count of "use?"

I'm a poet and I didn't know it!
HOoKD oN PHoNIkz w0Rckd fer mE! ;D

I use utilize alot...ha... but only in Physics/Organic chem lab reports when im supposed to sound semi pretenious. Theres a word... semi... for some reason i use that word (actually its only part of a word) alot. As in Joel plasket looks semi like Damian from ok go... not really... just about 35 %.

Damian,
I as well am a lover of words. I totally agree with you that the word "utilize" is a crap word. It does sound really stuffy when someone says it and they sound like a newsman.
so good luck in your fight to discontinue the "use"(haha) of "utilize"!
Mikaela

I believe the word utilize is a valid, seperate, word from use and completely agree with Margaret's arguement. Being a Latin vocabulary nerd, I would just like to add one thing to Margaret's point.

If you actually look at the Latin roots of the two words it may help. Dictionaries tend to not make distinctions between the latin root of the word you are interested in and the latin root of the word that is actually the latin root.

Use's root is indeed uti which mean 'to use' .

Utilize's root is also ultimately traced to uti, but the important thing is the actual latin root of the word utilize is utilis which means 'useful, advantageous, helpful'.

This may seem nitpicky but it's important. In Latin, no matter what ending you were to place on uti, it could never mean exactly the same thing as utilis. You would not use uti when you meant useful and you would not use utilis when you meant use.

Therefore, a word which is derived from utilis and not from uti is not simply another word for 'use' and is still a useful word in it's own right with an entirely different definition.

I'm just sayin'.

of course we would probably have words like subliminable

Yet again I get to blame something on Gutenberg. Modern english did not, unlike other languages, have hundreds and hundreds of years to evolve as a primarily spoken language for the general public and get fine tuned. I mean the printing press pops up and we are locked into spellings and weird grammar rules and silent letters and useless synonyms...
I mean if we didn't have a written record and dictionaries and thesauruses there would be a sort of Darwinian culling of our language and we would not have words like utilize.

Margaret, do I remember correctly that you were among the partying debaters? If so, you may remember that the larger topic at hand was that of synonyms, and I kept drunkenly asserting that they don't really exist, except briefly when languages collide, before general use distinguishes them. (Then we got on to the near-synonymns that pop up when people spontaneously shellac their normal words with pomp.) Anyhow, there's no question that I was overstating the case, as I am inclined to do in general (and even more when drunkenly pontificating), but inspired by your diligent research into use/utilize, I went and found the passage from the Steven Pinker book (The Language Instinct, pg 157) that got me started on my rant:

Though most common words have many meanings, few meanings have more than one word. That is, homonyms are plentiful, synonyms rare. (Virtually all supposed synonyms have some difference in meaning, however small. For example, skinny and slim differ in their connotation of desirability; policeman and cop differ in formality.) No one really knows why languages are so stingy with words and profligate with meanings, but children seem to expect it (or perhaps it is this expectation that causes it!)...

... If a child already knows a word for a kind of thing, then when another word is used for it, he or she does not take the easy but wrong way and treat it as a synonym. Instead, the child tries out some other possible concept. For example, Markman found that if you show a child a pair of pewter tongs and call it a biff, the child interprets biff as meaning tongs in general, showing the usual bias for mid-level objects, so when asked for "more biffs," the child picks out a pair of plastic tongs. But if you show a child a pewter cup and call it a biff, the child does not interpret biff as meaning "cup," because most children already know a word that means "cup," namely cup. Loathing synonyms, the children guess that biff must mean something else, and the stuff the cup is made of is the next most readily available concept. When asked for more biffs, the child chooses a pewter spoon or pewter tongs.

This, of course, says nothing about the use/utilize debate. Regardless of origin, one camp says they connote slightly different actions, the other (mine) says they connote the same action but with a different speaker's tone; in any event, we all agree they aren't perfect synonyms.

But who knew that the LA Weekly Style Council was the hotspot for such ridiculous pedants? Go nerds, go.

I think I'm the only person who was thinking that I was a complete idiot for not utilizing the word utilize in place of use in all those AP essays I had to write in High School.
So, basically, you can always replace the word utilize with the word use but you can only replace the word use with utilize sometimes. Gah, this sounds like some bizarre IQ question.
BTW, ? and the Mysterians utilized the play on words between the name Question MARK and the symbol Question MARK. But it's of no real importance since they were only one hit wonders with "96 Tears," and the lead singer, ?, is now some insane guy obsessed with aliens.

you can use "utilize" instead of "use" depending on what form of "use" you're using *hahaha*
From the website Thesaurus.com:

Main Entry: use
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: application
Synonyms: account, adoption, advantage, appliance, applicability, appropriateness, avail, bag, benefit, call, capitalization, cause, convenience, custom, employment, end, exercise, exertion, fitness, good, habit, handling, hang-up, help, helpfulness, kick, mileage, mobilization, necessity, need, object, occasion, operation, point, practice, profit, purpose, reason, relevance, service, serviceability, shot, thing, treatment, usability, usage, usefulness, utility, value, way, wont, worth

Main Entry: use
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: work with
Synonyms: accept, adopt, apply, bestow, capitalize, consume, control, do with, draw on, employ, exercise, exert, exhaust, expend, exploit, govern, handle, make do, make use, make with, manage, manipulate, operate, play on, ply, practice, put forth, regulate, relate, run, run through, spend, utilize, waste, wield, work

so you can substitute "use" with "utilize" when "use" is used in a sentence as a verb.

Well, naturally, since "google" is quite possibly one of the best verbs.

Jessica, the printed word hasn't stopped English from growing. The continuing fluidity of language was, in fact, the overarching subject of the drunken discussion which began all of this. How irrational it is: it pains me to no end to see "impact" used as a verb nowadays, even though I love seeing "google" as one.

Ahem. Fluidity? Perhaps the word most appropriate here, and the one undoubtedly on the tip of your proverbial tongue which you abandoned in your haste to comment, would be mutability.

But I do so commend your noble effort!

(Philologists always give me a tickle in my knickers.)

Damian, or any other word lover, knows that English is a living language, words develop/expand/become more adapt at expressing a specific feeling, sentiment or expression. Utilize versus use is just as cumbersome, but perhaps as necessary as the words hostage and captive, or any other combination of similar words that are easily replaced. English is one of the most word-rich languages in the world and there has been some overlap in said developing words. Why bark on someone who chooses one word over another to express the same idea?

Saying that the person who came up with the word utilize was an asshole is nothing short of a scandal for any word lover. You know who really is a prick? The person who came up with the 17th word for snow in the Inuit language, sixteen was just fine… but then someone had to go and mess everything up by adding a 17th word for the same goddamn thing.

What is even more of a problem is the people who have 'tribulations' with peoples' vocabulary use in the first place. Grammar is one thing, but to pick on someone's poor word choice is just cruel. It's not their fault that they are subjected to the standards of the American educational system. So, if someone wants to use the word utilize because they don't know that 'use' sounds less 'assholeish,' they are obviously a product of the system and should not be made fun of on blogs, Damian.

But then there are the people, who use grandiose words that sound impressive, but most often these words are used just to make other people think the user is erudite. If the SAT word is a better fit for the sentence you are trying to create, then by all means use it. But, Damian, was officious really more effective than bossy? Or are you just trying to demonstrate your own self-worth and importance in the literate community? Was impressing the people at the cocktail party going to make you sleep better at night?

Damian, I agree with you. When people use the word "utilize" or other bigger-word-sounding synonyms, they generally are doing so because the thesaurus on their word processor told them to or so that they sound smarter.

Much like the pricks who invented the word "floccinaucinihilipilification"

I recall having the same arguement with one of my peers a while back. After completing her college admittance essays, the word "use" no longer existed in her mind. She insisted on using "utilize" to sound more eloquent, when instead she sounded like a verbose ASS.

"Excuse me sir, MAY I UTILIZE THE STAPLER?!?"

please eradicate this ridiculous word from the dictionary and use its more concise three letter counterpart.

I have always been fond of the nauseous vs nauseated arguement.

Word usage gripes should be limited to MISUSED words. Take my example above: nauseous vs. nauseated. In most cases, the common person would say that if they felt the sensation that normally precedes vomitting, they would say they were nauseous. This is simply not the correct use of the word. In fact, one would say that they had a nauseous stomach or that they felt nauseated. In this case, one could feel somewhat justified in correcting the person with whom one was conversing simply to request further information. "Did you mean you had a nauseous stomach? That you felt, nauseated?" would be an appropriate question to ask to ascertain the meaning of the other speaker's statement AND to drive home the meaning of the two words being used. In this case, correct word use supercedes pretention. I had this same discussion with my roommate who was an English Literature major at Princeton University and I, a mere drop-out from Drexel University in the Music Industry program, corrected her which would dictate that correct word use does not come directly from ones education, but rather the specific set of conversations, course studies, life experiences, discussions and corrected test papers that would lead one to discover when to use utilize and when to use nauseous.

I cannot fault Damian for trying to use "S.A.T. words" at a cocktail party in Los Angeles; one does need to occupy oneself amongst the vapid, blond plastic people and smog-ledites. Perhaps his behavior looks smug to those who don't EVER try to use their extensive vocabularies to get ahead. Here on the east coast, it's another story. I'm not trying to start an east coast/west coast feud or anything, I'm just saying that I doubt this would have been the topic of a blog written by those writing the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times.

In the future, let's try to behave as Damian does by adding interesting new words expressing new ideas to our cocktail party conversations. But let's leave our I-know-more-than-you word use discussions at home. It's like John Ondrasik from Five For Fighting once said, "... you've only got 100 years to live."

excuse me...that was "argument"...in the heat of passion I tend to misspell

angela: you're a genius. i will treasure the word "smog-ledites" until the day i die. that's fucking brilliant.

and i love that you busted this out: "I doubt this would have been the topic of a blog written by those writing the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times."

awesome.

selena: good points. one quibble: the whole 17 words for snow thing is a total myth. you don't have to be inuit to intuit that.

karleigh: really? what happened to that dude? is he obsessed with aliens and totally crazy, or obsessed with aliens in a thom yorke kind of way?

In defense, I neither condemned the use of any word, nor haughtily used the word "officious" in a blog. I did both while drunk at a party, where I had no idea one of the many people I was offending happened to be a professional blogger. I have weakly defended my pedantic argument here, but I agree, Selena-Renee, that only a real asshole would actually put much stock in any of this... but it is kind of fun to debate.

For the record, I prefer "assholic" to "assholeish"

Shades- alot is not a word, it is A LOT- separate. While we're on the topic...

in the department of long and absurd words, here's the real name of a welsh town. admittedly, it'a a name, but it's still a pretty impressive word:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

check out the four serial L's...

Why not see what the masters of the written word have to say about this argument?

According to Strunk and White (The Elements of Style, Third Edition. With index!), the word 'utilize' is a commonplace of careless writing and bad style. Stunk and White have found that when a person employs the word 'utilize,' he or she is likely misusing several words to form a vague, rather than definitive, statement.

For example, Stunk and White suggest doing away with the phrase "I utilized the facilities." In its place, the authors suggest saying, "I used the toilet." While I find the latter statement to be a bit graphic, who am I to question the man who wrote Charlotte's Web?

In addition, Strunk and White seem to indicate that the word 'utilize' may in fact fall into a larger undesirable list of words ending with –ize. "Why use the word moisturize when there is the simple, unpretentious word moisten?"

In conclusion, it seems that Strunk and White believe using lotion should probably an integral part of everyone's skincare routine, and that the word 'utilize' should be avoided at all costs.

So "use" is better than "utilize".
si o no?

"in the department of long and absurd words, here's the real name of a welsh town. admittedly, it'a a name, but it's still a pretty impressive word:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

check out the four serial L's..."

HAHAHAHA. Somebody once brought in one of those souvenir squashed pennies that they'd gotten from that town in Wales to show in my Shakespeare class, and the name literally went around the penny almost two times.

Sorry, that added no intellectual merit to this conversation whatsoever.

I do agree that "utilize" and "use" have basically become synonymous in modern English. (If it makes you feel any better, I told several of my English major friends your argument while watching "America's Next Top Model"- HAHA- tonight, and they all yelled, "OH MY GOD IT IS JUST A MORE OBNOXIOUS WAY OF SAYING 'USE'!") But afterwards, my roomie and I (one of said English majors) did agree that there seems to be a very subtle difference in definition; "utilize" seems to convey that the object being utilized is participating in the action, while the object being "used" is merely being acted upon. I also disagree that it's a completely useless word. While it may irk you personally, I don't feel that simply because it's used fairly often in a way to present a more "educated" vocabulary on the part of speaker makes it useless. I'm sure there are times at which the word "utilize" could come in handy. (I'm just too lazy to think of any right now, which probably doesn't help my argument any, but oh, well.)

But we've basically beat this topic to a pulp, haven't we? What I really want to say is that I'm a little lost as to your use of the word "officious." From what I've gotten from various sources (including the Oxford American Thesaurus of Current English, and Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary, which I know is reliable because 1) it's very large and 2) it's sitting in the Smith College library :D), "officious" basically means "rendering a service or duty," "eager to help or serve," "unofficial," or "meddlesome." None of which really seems to fit in your argument against "utilize." Were you perhaps looking for a synonym for "pretentious," like "showy," "ostentatious," or "grandiose"? Or is there some other hidden meaning for "officious" that I'm missing?

Or were you just really trashed and maybe we shouldn't take your drunken ramblings to heart?

Regardless, thanks for the distraction from the Sociology homework. Reading about the alternate working class cultures of 19th and 20th century Worcester, MA is going to be far less interesting than this debate, I can tell you that...

I tried to pronounce that town once, Damian. I was in the hospital for a week. ;)

damian, your welsh town reminds me of another city that has a ridiculously long name that has about 37 or 38 syllables and is called:

Krungthepmahanakhon
Bovornratanakosin
Mahintharayutthaya
Mahadilokpop
Noparatratchathaniburirom
Udomratchanivetmahasathan
Amornpimanavatarnsathit
Sakkathattiyavisnukarmprasit

but is more commonly known as Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. i have no idea how they got bangkok from that.

the name (in case you're wondering) actually translates to:

Great City of Angels, the Supreme Repository for Divine Jewels, the Great Land Unconquerable, the Grand and Prominent Realm, the Royal and Delightful Capital City Full of Nine Noble Gems, the Highest Royal Dwelling and Grand Palace, the Divine Shelter and Living Place of the Reincarnated Spirits

i heard someone say it once, and it literally took about 30 seconds to say the entire thing. wtf?

Thank you all for your comments!

I agree with Strunk and White that you can't utilize a toilet, unless, perhaps, you're Marcel Duchamp and you call it art.

This veritable frenzy of wordsmithery is very entertaining, if a bit strange. I can't even begin to respond to it all but I do need to set a couple things straight.

1. Just because I challenged Damian's claim and blogged about it (mostly because it was a holiday weekend and thus fairly uneventful) doesn't mean that I think he was a pretentious ass who didn't know how to properly *impact* the banter at a Los Angeles cocktail party. I enjoyed the conversation, opened my dictionary the minute I got home, and googled him the next day. That's good tipsy chit-chat if you ask me.

2. I'm still not even sure if he meant to use the word "officious" because it doesn't really fit the context. Damian? Either way, as a writer I would hardly be mocking someone for using "SAT words." Nor do I consider that the pinnacle of erudition; let's not forget we take the SATs in high school.

3. Re: the east coast/west coast and New York Times comments, apparently the author didn't read my bio. I just moved here from New York and do, in fact, write for the Times. And by the way, the blond plastic people thing is a very tired cliche.

cheers to you all...

I prefer to say use instead of utilize because its shorter and it doesnt make me sound like some sort of a smartass.

Why any person with a brain in their head would actually use google as a word and not a website's name is totally beyond me. It sounds like something an extremely social teenage girl would say. Me not being one wouldn't know why. I do believe that it does make one sound like a complete moron and a little bit of an ass. While some people say that google should be added to the dictionary as a word, it isnt because it has no actual definition, unless u consider it to be 'to search something on the internet through the popular website www.google.com.' To me that sounds quite stupid....

-Sarah-

Jesus, this has turned into quite the maelstrom of criticism, huh? I'm signing off after this one...

To oblige, however, I was using 'officious' as in the OED definition: "asserting authority or interfering in an overbearing way." That is frequently how I hear "utilize" utilized: by someone overbearing seeking to assert authority by sounding technical or precise, when I think that they just sound puffed-up.

si

Well, I doubt I was at the party in question, seeing as I'm stuck here in Massachusetts until I finish High school, and I'm also all of fifteen and a half years old. =) I wish I had been, though. It sounded exciting.

stuff like this just interests me. (plus jorge posted a thread on ok go's forum and has promised to give points to those with the best arguments, for either side.)

on a side note, I want to learn to speak welsh one day. It seems really cool.

and the other latin scholars here managed to prove my point way more than I could, I'm
only in my second year of Latin at school.

I'm not even sure I was trying to disprove your point. (even my mom said utilize was pompous and overblown.) I just felt the need to point out some arguments.

I can't really believe I spent as much time on it as I did. I'm really very sick of research seeing as my teacher's decided to give me big projects all due in the same week...=(
so I guess I really am a language nerd.....
go me.

-Mergwin (origin: margaret to meg to merg to mergwin)

Still not doing homework!

"While some people say that google should be added to the dictionary as a word, it isnt because it has no actual definition, unless u consider it to be 'to search something on the internet through the popular website www.google.com.' To me that sounds quite stupid...."

I'm not saying that it should be added to the dictionary, but you have to admit that "google" has become widespread cultural slang. This kind of brings me back to the old "ain't" debate- all through my childhood, teachers would tell me "'Ain't' isn't a word!" But the truth is, it is a word- it's just not proper vocabulary. I feel like "google" is kind of the same way- you can argue that it's not really a word, but at the same time, you can't deny that it hasn't become widely used in popular culture and language, and must therefore have some sort of linguistic importance. (Whether it deserves that importance is another debate.)

Okay! I just realised that I might be making an ass out of myself. Really going to read now!

"Jesus, this has turned into quite the maelstrom of criticism, huh? I'm signing off after this one..."

Damian, I expected a stronger tolerance for mockery and criticism from you. We kid because we love.

Margaret-

Where in Mass. are you?

I always get a thriling shiver down the back of my neck when I am able to make up a new word that fully embodies what I need it to mean.

My new favourite word is 'fuckhead' when reflecting on the flakiness of the twentysomething males I keep getting entangled with. Sometimes I like to make a combination and have a "flakey fuckhead". Not the most cultivated of words. But I think it does a great job of expressing what I need it to say. Simple and to the point is always best.

I just noticed, Damian, that you used the word "maelstrom". You don't happen to subscribe to dictionary.com's word of the day email do you? It was a word of the day a couple days ago.

I must admit that it pleases me, that you, Damian, take offense at people who use words hauntingly; but now I am more worried by this drunken stupor that has led us nowhere. Any clever, witty person can bemuse a crowd with his ideas when drunk, but it's tiresome if it's taken on too far, i.e. blogging and comments by little fans for days on end. Even if this is fun, be careful the next time you drink and there's a New York Times writer nearby.

P.S. When I use the term SAT words, I don't mean words that are useful if learned properly, but rather the words that kids learn in conjunction with 300 others just to get 20 points better on a test. I don't mean to degrade good quality, high potency words that carry weight when used properly.

P.P.S. I know I am a little fan posting on this, the hypocrisy is not lost on me.

I must admit that it pleases me, that you, Damian, take offense at people who use words hauntingly; but now I am more worried by this drunken stupor that has led us nowhere. Any clever, witty person can bemuse a crowd with his ideas when drunk, but it's tiresome if it's taken on too far, i.e. blogging and comments by little fans for days on end. Even if this is fun, be careful the next time you drink and there's a New York Times writer nearby.

P.S. When I use the term SAT words, I don't mean words that are useful if learned properly, but rather the words that kids learn in conjunction with 300 others just to get 20 points better on a test. I don't mean to degrade good quality, high potency words that carry weight when used properly.

P.P.S. I know I am a little fan posting on this, the hypocrisy is not lost on me.

I was at the party, and I bumped into Steffie last night at a bar, and she told me to take a look at this blog. I think all 5 or 6 of us that were standing in a circle discussing these words that Damian finds annoying woke up the next day and looked these words up.

I think everyone's covered the "utilize" issue pretty well. And while Damian and quite a few commentators here don't like the word and deem it redundant, clearly it stems from various Romance Languages and definitely has a different enough meaning from the word "use" that it popped up and remains in the English language. If you don't like it, don't use it. But if you are going to go on a tirade about useless words, and most especially useless words that come up too often these days, you might want to refrain from using the word "fuck" so much.

This one here is from the American Heritage Book of English Usage:

Impact has been used as a verb since 1601, and its figurative use dates from 1935, allowing people plenty of time to get accustomed to it. It may be that its frequent appearance in jargon-riddled remarks of politicians, military officials, and financial analysts has made people suspicious. Nevertheless, the use of impact as a verb has become so common in corporations and institutions that younger speakers have begun to regard it as standard. It seems likely, therefore, that the verb impact will eventually become as usual as the verb contact has become over the last 30 years.

'Nuff said, right? I just thought I'd put my two cents in because I was there, and my opinion on the matter couldn't compete with Damian's confidence at the party...

By the way, I'd never heard your band before, but the, ahem, "conversation" at the party certainly made you memorable. I looked your band up and listened to your music right after I looked up "impact" and "utilize".

Simply stated it is the general usage of synonyms can often be credited with making language more interesting. The utilization of bigger words does not infact make one sound smarter, but often accomplishes the task of making one sound like a pompous jackass.

Often arguments with my (lawyer/law librarian) brother can be resolved by simply pointing out that he is being a jackass. I don't use big words to accomplish this. Naturally this falls as a last resort to me, because it is rather enjoyable to best him in a war of words. Being the baby of the family holds it challenges.

Though I must note that idiocy beats out synonyms as the most interesting celebration of language. For instance, my close associate 'inventing' the word dip-fuck to combine her two favorite curse words; dip-shit, and fuck.

liz - you are correcting the wrong person. the authors are named after their message and not before, so check yo'self. love, shades.

Steffie, I am getting comment envy. 38 and counting!
As a real English person from England who speaks proper English, I have only thing to say to you all - SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL ROCKS!
Love to you all, Caroline

Shit, I guess its 46 comments and counting, not 38. (dont want these clever clogs thinking I cant count)

I wanted to agree with those many females disagreeing with Damian; I'm usually all for the misguided cementing of the sisterly bond through ganging up on the males. In this case, however, I have to concede. (I should have predicted this, as the entire debate is more or less based on [insert euphemism for bullshit] gleaned from varying degrees of research and informed by a similar range of horniness, compounded by the fact that Damian was a semiotics major. Aside from my own majors, semiotics as a field of study is a type of bullshit [Yes, I'm just going for it there.] so thick and rich that I've found it to be the compost of the Humanities.)

In any case, the "use" or "utilize" argument is much like the rule children learn in kindergarten geometry: a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. "Utilize" can be spoken/written/etc. instead of "use," but "use cannot always stand in for "utilize." (It also may be helpful to review Damian's first post, in which he addresses the problem/solution of context.) The interchangeability of the words in modern usage, however, is colored by audience perception. How many times have I gleefully watched "Judge Judy" only to see her give the You're-Simply-Dumb-As-Piss look to some trailer-dwelling defendant attempting to appear intelligent by saying "he had axed me a question" rather than "he axed me a question"? What I want to make clear is the fact that the defendant's use of the imperfect tense was not intended to convey that the person axing the question did it multiple times and that the axing was not, as would have been implied by the use of the perfect tense, a one-time affair. Instead, the defendant chose to add the "had" in order to influence how Judy and the court of public opinion would judge her; she wanted to be perceived as bright. (The paltry success of this device is a topic I don't wish to tackle.)

Similarly, those who employ "utilize" instead of "use" in situations where the latter would suffice, at least in my view, deserve any ridicule that should come their way for their thinly veiled attempts to seem eloquent. (It is possible, however, that either a more earnest or more successfully sneaky treatment of drawing on the Fancy Word, that is, the lack of veil or application of a thicker veil, would eliminate the desire to mock the user.) "Use" is a more colloquial form of many, many verbs and verb phrases; the derision of one who substitutes "utilize" for the sake of variety is less warranted, especially if he/she is operating in the realm of communication more formal than spoken conversation.

In such conversation, it is decidedly not disturbing to come across the random, though not randomly misplaced or misused, Big Word. It is inspiringly surprising that intelligence is gaining ground as modern currency and commendable – either as a triumph of tolerance or true wit – that one could more or less correctly exercise one's vocabulary when inebriated. Especially in L.A.

Wow...parties in Ohio consist of getting sh*tfaced followed by shopping cart races down the street at 2am. Too much fancy talk for me. :P

Let It Rain, Let It Pour....

"By the way, I'd never heard your band before, but the, ahem, "conversation" at the party certainly made you memorable. I looked your band up and listened to your music right after I looked up "impact" and "utilize"."

what did you think? my favorite off the new album is oh lately its so quiet and also good idea at the time

"Use" and "utilize" have similar meanings, but they are not exactly the same. Therefore there is need for both words. I think that's really all you need to know.

Rumor has it that Prince says, "Damian isn't very good at utilizing his jaw muscles and gives lousy head when on tour in Minnesota"!

While this has nothing to do with the previous, may i point out how insanely lazy the english language has become? Words like "fro-yo" are ACTUALLY being put in the dictionary! Just fucking say frozen yogurt! How many times does one say frozen yogurt in their lifetime that it needs to be shortened anyways?

While this has nothing to do with the previous comment, may i point out how insanely lazy the english language has become? Words like "fro-yo" are ACTUALLY being put in the dictionary! Just fucking say frozen yogurt! How many times does one say frozen yogurt in their lifetime that it needs to be shortened anyways?

weird. That last comment posted by "Jack" was actually posted by me, Hanna....hmmm

hah and a "jack" hasnt even posted on here.

No no no...the poster's name is on the bottom of their post. That got me confused too.

"While this has nothing to do with the previous, may i point out how insanely lazy the english language has become? Words like "fro-yo" are ACTUALLY being put in the dictionary! Just fucking say frozen yogurt! How many times does one say frozen yogurt in their lifetime that it needs to be shortened anyways?"

"Fro-yo" is a word now??? Gah, modern American English IS really lazy. It's disgusting.

Yay for Anna discovering OK Go! That's why half of us are here- el webmaster de OK Go commanded us to comment, haha.

I didn't read past the third post so I doubt anyone is going to read this... But Damian, if you were my English teacher I'd keep showing up for help even when I did well. And when you'd try and send me away I'd just say 'But I didn't get 100%' and come off as an officious ass trying to hard to utilize ..her teachers?

What I can't stand the most about this supposed "heated" debate over two words is the EXCESSIVE amounts of grammatical and spelling errors on behalf of SEVERAL of your self-proclaimed grammar/word nazis. And speaking of being PRETENTIOUS, making it a point that the world "utilize" can be replaced in every situation with the word "use" is pretentious in itself. I find that the example given at the very top (with the teachers) is means enough as to how the sentence meaning is contingent on the usage of the word "utilize".

But again, I would like to reiterate the hypocrisy of some of these comments left. Love the language. Don't butcher it.

I agree with the previous: criticizing people's misuse of language via misused language is hypocritical (as is adding yet another argument here with the intent to oppose redundancy, but I guess I'm doing it anyway).

Here's my problem with "utilize:" even if it does have a second meaning that is slightly different from that of "use," it most frequently appears as nothing more than "use" reincarnated into an awkwardly ostentatious multisyllabic monstrosity. Synonyms are fine when they have unique artistic/linguistic merits, and unusual words are valuable when they allow you to express ideas more clearly or completely. But "utilize" fits neither of these criteria: it's redundant (when used simply as a replacement "use") rather than innovative, and obscuring rather than clarifying. Which makes "utilize" pretty useless.

However, the real reason "utilize" is so nauseating is because of the reason it is most often used: as a shallow attempt at eloquence. When you utilize "utilize," you're just publicly announcing that you find it neccessitatious to establishmentalize an interestinginestly academicaniacalle image. You will only make your argument/statement more obfuscatorianly and less creditiabilitible, and you will seem desperatious to appear perspicacious (unfortunately, that one's an actual word).

I suppose what this whole argument has proven is that you shouldn't use said (but preferably unsaid) word without understanding the implications: people (like me) will judge you, you will appear pretentious, you will invoke an involuntary "ugh!" from any English majors in your general area, and your word choice may be subject to a meticulous massacre. "Utilize" at your own risk.

I leik wurds. Their Awsoime. I wuz the speeling-B champ @ mi skool.

Have a Decemberlicious day.

Just thought I would diverge from all this debate about "use" versus "utilize" to comment on the lousy "usability" of putting a dotted line separator between the poster's name and his or her comments. Owners of the blog or its underlying software take note - you definitely should have seen that one coming, and a fix is in order.

That said, the most important takeaway point for all readers of this thread is that the only way to truly appreciate Damian's linguistic skill is to purchase a copy of the album "Oh No" for your listening enjoyment.

(Jorge, as a fellow marketer, Webmaster and OK Go fan, do I get any points for that?)

somehow very unintelligent people found this.

I appologize to Girlinthedark if my comment prompted the "unintelligent people" comment [if it didn't, ignore me; or, just ignore me now and save yourself the trouble]. I like to pretend I'm witty when I'm not... at all. Besides, bloging brings out the worst in me, both mentally and because of the fact that I never stop typing (as the length of this post will surely show).

That being said, anything I bring to this entire blogfight will appear redundant simply because of the large number of people who have weighed in on the subject before me (with all these people, surely someone must have said what I think and any further discussion on my part would be moot... is that spelled right? I'm an awful speller).

So, I would like to ask something that has been bothering me for a while; it's not a question of words, but of grammar. Seeing as my school district seems to love keeping us students in the dark about grammar, rather, leaving us to fend for ourselves in the grammatical world (the sheer number of grammar books on my shelves can attest to this fact), I really have never learned verb tenses or anything remotely of the kind... except for in French. However, knowing "le subjontif" will not aid me in writing, say, a blog entry... unless said blog entry is in French... which it usually isn't...

But I've deviated from my point entirely.

Simply asked: What is the past perfect (I think that's what it's called) for "drink."

I've spent a 3 hour bus-ride with a group of students and all were unable to come to any real point...

Is it "would have drunk" or "would have drank" or something totally different? Any help you could give me would be awesome.

[I appologize in advance for the triviality of the question; but really, it has been bugging me].

Amy, "would have drunk/drank" is passive voice, which is frowned upon in English compositional types of things (using the two verbs in the past tense).

Ooooh, I see. Thank you Jane. I really am clueless when it comes to grammar/language in general. I blame the school system a lot, I know, but I do feel they're partially (at least) guilty for my inability to use/utilize (take your pick) words effectively.

(It's really like someone turning off all the lights in a room, at midnight, then expecting you to complete a jigsaw puzzle... which is unpleasant and usually results in someone getting jabbed in the eye, namely me.)

Thanks again. I'll be sure to avoid the mistake in the future. However, assuming that one was interrupted from a task one was about to complete... how would one express this to another without being grammatically incorrect? (If ___ had not happened... I would have ___?) Or is that still passive? I know that this occurs in French with the past conditional and plus-que-parfait (si j'avais fait ça, je serais allée... please excuse my pathetic attempt at french, by the way), but I'm not certain.

Passive voice: "If he had not fallen down, I would have kissed him."
Active voice: "He fell down, so I didn't kiss him."

(Something like that, grammer usage isn't my strong point)

It's passive voice because the subject passively received the action. Sometimes it can be confusing, as to who commited the action. Sometimes politians use it: "There were many mistakes made." or something, and it doesn't tell you who made the mistakes..

Anyway, passive voice can be avoided by not using (nor utilizing) different forms of "to be" (is, are, am , was, were, has been, have been, had been, will be, will have been, being).

Aaaannnd, I realized I started a thought in that last paragraph and never finished it. I meant to say,
"I think this was brought on by David Ives's "A Singular Kinda Guy," a play where a man convinces himself he is a typewriter and uses this idea of being a typewriter to justify his love for words: "-like 'vastation.' Or 'phenomenological.' Or 'subcutaneous.' Words are what a typewriter's all about, right?""

Sorry about my grammar/sentance structure. See? I am rather incompetent.

I see. I tend to muddle my languages. I'm not extremely adept at French, nor am I a master of the English language (which is rather pathetic). I appreciate the help and will be sure to avoid this messy passive voice business in the future.

Different topic...said at the risk that it has already been covered at length in above comments: Does anyone else find a strange delight in discovering words that just roll off the lounge? They don't have to be "large" or "fancy," but you find yourself saying these words simply because, well, they're fun to say?

My recent favorites include: Paleontological, Masticated, and Adage.

I think reading David Ives's "A Singular Kinda Guy" where a man convinces himself he is a typewriter; he uses this to justify his love for words: "-like 'vastation.' Or 'phenomenological.' Or 'subcutaneous.' Words are what a typewriter's all about, right?"

Just a thought.

Again, have a Decemberlicious day.

To make up for my grammatical ineptitude (and also simply because I'm a blogging addict), I felt like sharing this tiny fact that really amused me for a good, oh, five minutes:

The origin of the term "O.K" came from typists who, as a joke, would put "Oll Korrect" at the top of papers.

Oh those silly typists.

For some reason (well because I really like Ok Go) I feel it neccessary to write on this little blog thing. Now, I'm not educated at Brown but it seems to me, that "utilize" isn't utilized enough. If anything utilizing it more often would make much more sense than using use. One, if it does make you sound smart, then utilize it to bulster you already magnificant ego. Thus making you look like an ass to those that aren't as smart as you. Which brings me to my point, which will more likely than not be lost by my confusing ramble, I say "Just use the word 'usalize.'" A mixture of the two may bring both worlds together. And in the words of a musician I can't remember the name of right now, "It's a small world after all..." (which is totally out of context here).

People have discussed how language is getting lazy these days; well, if you ask me, what is making people lazy is that we believe that having a good vocabulary is s sign of pretension. My english lit teacher always told me that if you can use a more common word then you should. I really don't understand that. There are a number of words to describe very similar things because it allows you to be specific. Why would I say "blue" when I really mean "azure"? I believe that the reason utilize has become a replacement for use is because people have avoided "pretentious words" like the plague, and in doing so changed the meanings of perfectly acceptable words. Without word variation language would stop being beautiful. Imagine T.S. Eliot's poetry in newspeak... tragedy. Instead of worrying about whether or not a word should be banned we should fix the way people misuse words, that somehow seems more important. For example, impacted vs impact anyone?

Damian,
Your argument is very bad. Dumb and stupid also mean close to the same thing. Are you saying that you don't appreciate multiple colorful ways to express the same thing?

who would have thought that an argument on the subleties of "utilize" and "use" would be so long and verbose!

but then again, i did read all the way to the end . . .

The point of language is communication. The advantage of a large vocabulary is being able to better communicate your thoughts. The verbal form of these thoughts should be as lucid as possible, instead of spoken in the most exclusive language you can contrive.

To those who defend pretention, but condemn misuse of words: pretention is often a direct cause of misuse of words. If people grope for the "impressive" word instead of the most vivid and clear, this often means that people will forgo "best" for "biggest." Newspeak was tragic because it prevented competant communication, but so can the abstruse abuse of a vocabulary. No, clarity and conciseness do no always coincide, but pedantic circumlocution is often more harmful than simplistic clarity. True intelligence will manifest itself in your ideas themselves, and I would choose BEING intelligent over SOUNDING intelligent any day.

here's a website that pretty much extends this conversation . . .. check it out

www.wsu.edu:8080/%7Ebrians/errors/errors.html#errors

it discusses ambiguity and errors in the english language

if your that obsessive
and you obviously are if you read this far

I feel that my post needs some clarification. 1) I did not defend pretension, I just don't believe that having a good vocabulary makes someone pretentious. 2) I condemned the misuse of all words, not simply the small ones, so if someone misuses a big word then they are just as guilty. 3) Newspeak wasn't a tragedy because it never happened in reality. The discussion of books should be held in the present tense. (e.g., Samuel Vimes IS a member of the Watch in "Men at Arms"). Furthermore, even if it had happened the biggest tragedy apart from being controlled through language by a dictator is that language would lose it's beauty.

Now that that has been said, a sign of intelligence is a large vocabulary, so sounding intelligent and being intelligent often go hand in hand. Plus, you sound like an idiot if you constantly misuse "big" words.

Finally, there are a lot of people that have claimed that "utilize" is a pretentious words to use, but they have used other words with much more "everyday" alternatives. Are you being tongue in cheek or do you not really believe that big words are pretentious and are simply playing the devil's advocate?

Okay - I really wanted to agree w/ Steffie, despite loving Damian's mind desperately. Then Steffie came out with "utilizability", and Damian failed to bust her for it. So did anyone else. Yes, the mini-thread about made-up words ran through after that, but there it was, right at the outset. Damian had the coup de grace laid at his feet, and turned away from it! Too gentlemanly to tell Steffie it should have been "utility"? How unsatisfying! Neither opponent now has my complete respect! (Although Damian still has those pants ...)

This whole thing is like super-old and I doubt anyone will even see my comment way down here, but I have to say that the word "utilize" IS necessary, if only to juniors in high school who desperately need to bullshit their way through an essay and use some "big words" to beef it up. So please, let us keep it.

This makes me laugh. I didn't know that such a big issue will come out of the word "utilize" I think it was, and then it ended up talkig about the word "google" and then I lost track. As a high schooler I would have to say that the person that made such a big deal about Damian's use of language should perhaps not critisize others, but critisize himself to see what he could fix in his vocabulary. I probably have the worst vocabulary ever, even though I'm an honors student in my English class. I shouldn't be in that class, but anyways I understand that when somone wants to make a point they want to be right and it was fun to see how much people struggled to show their opinion. I don't think I have too much of an opinion except that now I know what the word utilize means and i will actually remember it, unlike the 20 vocab words I learn in english, then after the test forget them. People that love words I think you guys are great. But seriously.......reading all this drama is like listening to my friends fight in middle school....its just dumb and funny

im not sure about the whole story, like the point, because i actually dont know what the word 'utilize' means and i dont have a dictionary here. So i cant really say much about it. But from what i think i uderstand is that this was all before OK Go was actually all famous?? thats what i thought but then you mentioned "A Million Ways" which was new. Correct? I should really just forget this whole thing because i have no idea what i just read. Anyway. I love the band an help me understand this please.

...o.o...yeah, i dont get this whole thing either...and now...its 2006....Damian has a gf?....mayjor reality SHOCK.