Sunday, May 8, 2011

Down with "utilize"!

Some years ago, George Orwell took aim at the needless multiplication of syllables. His essay on the topic, "Politics and the English Language", is part diagnosis and part cure.  "Silly words and expressions have often disappeared," he writes, "not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority."

One silly word that Orwell mentions, under the heading "pretentious diction," is "utilize."  In his spirit, I propose its total elimination.  I've noticed that "utilize" rarely occurs in isolation; it almost always precedes or follows other gobbledygook.  Asked why his company is more profitable than the competition, a mid-level manager caught in the grip of "utilize" might say:

"We utilize results-driven methodologies" (13 syllables). 

Were the same person to speak English, he would say:

"We do what works" (4 syllables).

Does "utilize" ever accomplish anything that "use" does not, other than tripling the syllable count? If it did, a case could be made for its preservation. But I'm hard pressed to think of a single example where "use" would not do just as well as "utilize."  And I can think of instances where substituting "utilize" for "use" leads to nonsense: "Excuse me, I have to utilize the bathroom."

Many occurrences of "utilize" are not so obviously silly.  But they do, I think, illustrate Orwell's point about the decadence of our language.

Why worry about such things?  Rather than reproduce Orwell's analysis, I will simply quote a positive benefit that he mentions: "If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy.  You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself."  

I've picked on "utilize."  What other words or phrases strike you as prime candidates for elimination?

4 comments:

  1. You live in a world of magniloquence and yearn for simplicity. Others live in a world of simplicity and yearn for subtlety/complexity.

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  2. One prime candidate is the replacement of the word problem with "challenge" as in "Obama faces old allies, new challenges." Let's just call Israel a problem for him, not a challenge.

    Also: synergy; push back (or pushback?--hard to know) in place of resist; "grow" as in "grow the church, grow the business." The list, as you well know, is endless!

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  3. http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/words-we-dont-say/

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  4. Elizabeth -- Thanks for your comment. I just learned that I had to approve it for "publication," since it was posted a certain number of days past the original entry. I should learn how to turn that feature off!

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