From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Concertise
Date: 11 Jan 93 20:57:01 GMT
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

In article <1993Jan11.193906.7938@bmerh85.bnr.ca> nadeau@bnr.ca (Rheal Nadeau) writes:
>In article <1993Jan11.174023.25507@Princeton.EDU> roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan11.055629.22312@bmerh85.bnr.ca> nadeau@bnr.ca (Rheal Nadeau) writes:

>>>Special Relativity caused a lot of gnashing, indeed.  So did a lot of
>>>other theories - but how many of them have proven to be valid (or, to
>>>use a scientific criteria for validity, useful)?

>>That's "criterion."  8-)

>>As for usefulness, people seem to be able to figure that out for themselves,
>>and gnashing generally doesn't take a very scientific view toward the 
>>issue when it comes to words.  

>But how useful is a word that irritates part of the target audience?

Depends.  How big is the irritated group?  Why are they irritated?
If it's misguided purism on their part, or lack of knowledge of the 
history of the word, then they're necessarily a small group, because
most people never give those issues a second thought, or even a first
one.

In this case, the group is tiny.  The word has been around for over a 
century, and was accepted without comment or qualification into an
early volume of the OED as plain English.

Again, how useful are "mob," "hopefully," "donate," "Greed," etc.?  All
these words have occasioned far more expressions of irritation than
the present one.  And I find them all quite useful.

>(Remember the discussion of "men (including women)", and the example
>brought up a couple of times of "nigger".  No doubt, some people find
>"nigger" a useful word, or they wouldn't use it, but most of us would
>add in the negative effect it's likely to have and judge its usefulness
>differently.  Now, "concertize" isn't as offensive as "nigger", but
>obviously some of us don't like it.)

It's also offensive for different -- in this case arcane -- reasons.
Offense against real people is one thing; against an imagined standard
of language, quite another.  

Can you name a word that *everyone* likes, aside from articles and conjunctions?No, wait, we had a complaint about articles just the other day.

>>>Certainly, a language is a living, growing, organism.  But uncontrolled
>>>growth is cancer, which is fatal if left untreated . . .

>>But the treatment happens by itself, and the self-appointed treaters
>>have no effect except to make the unschooled feel insecure.  What 
>>treatment other than the marketplace are you referring to?

>But - I'm part of the marketplace too, aren't I?  And as a language
>consumer, I have the right to make my preferences known . . .  (Of

Fine.  Now we know.  Doesn't mean much to the word.              

>course, as a consumer, I don't always get what I want!)

Exactly!  If nobody likes it, people will stop using it.  If you can
convince people that it causes obesity or halitosis, they'll stop
using it.  

But I object to tactics such as calling users of a word "illiterate," 
inventing etymologies, obscuring nuances, etc. in the service of
imposing one's taste.

>>>You mentioned Special Relativity earlier.  Surely, one reason this
>>>theory so caught the popular imagination was the simplicity, the
>>>elegance, of E=mc2 (pretend the "2" is a superscript, please!).

>>Special Relativity is a scientific theory -- there, elegance counts
>>for a lot, and is defined along pretty clear lines.  What is elegance
>>in a word?  Swift complained of inelegance wrt hunderds of words we
>>find perfectly OK.

>That's "hundreds" :-)

>Elegance is clearly defined in science?  I doubt it . . .

No, but it's generally understood among scientists.  I know an elegant
formula when I see one.  However, I have no idea which words you or 
anyone else will consider elegant.  Also, taste in words changes far
more rapidly than taste in formulas; Euler's and Gauss's elegant formulations
are still elegant.

>But shouldn't elegance also count in language?

Count for what?  For one's choice of words in a certain situation, where
one knows that one's listeners or readers have a certain standard of
elegance?  Yes, of course.

Should it count for deciding that a word is never to be used, or that its
users are boors?  Certainly not, not without a whole lot of evidence.  Not
on the basis of personal taste.

>And I'm sure Swift also complained about inelegance wrt hundreds of
>words we *don't* find perfectly OK, because they were never generally
>accepted.  (And they weren't accepted because enough people didn't like
>them, or find them useful or elegant . . .)

So what's his complaint worth?  Not a whole lot -- and the list of common
words he rejected it quite long.  See Lounsbury, _The Standard of English
Usage_, New HAven, 1906.

>>Concertize does *not* just mean "perform."  We went through this a while
>>ago.  It carries implications of professional performance, of repeated
>>performance, of touring, i.e., of something other than a steady gig.

>How many people are aware of the distinction?  I wasn't.  Doesn't this

Yet you've never been confused by the word.  People who keep it in their
*active* vocabulary tend to know which contexts to use it in; those are
the contexts you've seen it in, mostly.  That you're not aware of the 
nuances isn't very important.

>make "concertize" jargon, to be avoided in general use?  (I have nothing

No. 

>against jargon, btw - I use it all the time, in contexts where it will
>likely be understood.  Like my using "btw" in this post . . .)

Well?  Don't you know what they mean when they say "concertize"?  The 
context happens to be there whenever you see it; and it's usually the
professional, etc. context I described.  

Roger
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english