And one day, he just snapped…

This post is ill advised at best. No one needs to know. No one cares. I should definitely keep this to myself.

I’m not going to make a good choice here. I can’t. I can’t sit by any longer and allow the current state of affairs to pass without comment.

I hate the word ‘utilize.’ Is hate too strong a word? Loathe? Despise? I hate that it diminishes my esteem for those who deploy it, when they might have just used the word “use.” When did everyone with three years of passing grades in high school English class suddenly decide that the word ‘use’ was somehow deficient?

Does it sound simple somehow? How? Why? When did we decide that three letters was insufficient for one word? (BTW, I am not thrilled with the fact that “bee tee dubs” has also entered the vernacular. At what point does casualness approach total nihilism?)

I typed the phrase “define: utilize” into the Google search engine and came up with, “make practical and effective use of.” Right. You take an honest, active verb and makes it somehow both haughty and passive aggressive.

I had a conversation last 4th of July with a buddy about the rationale for “utilize.” He pointed out that it sounded better to say, “I utilized those developers” than to say, “I used those developers.” Okay. Translation: I effectively made them practically useful. (That’s a much better way to consider your co workers. You didn’t use them for a project, you controlled their utility to own their results.)

It will go on as most really awful new things seem to do. One day, of course, I will stagger out of bed, beaten by the tyranny of three syllables where one would have sufficed, and it will be over. The world will go back to using the word “use.”

 

Leave a Reply