From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Concertise
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 04:26:36 GMT

In article <1993Jan10.173503.26973@rose.com> peter.churchill@rose.com (peter churchill) writes:
>
>wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk recants:
[recantation and subsequent regrets deleted]

>I was no less dismayed and disbelieving than were you when that word first 
>appeared in the newsgroup. In more than 40 years of writing -- mainly as a 
>journalist -- I had never (D.G.) come across that graceless, dissonant, 
>even barbaric construction. My dismay was complete when I immediately found 
>it in my dictionary.

Um, what's graceless, dissonant, nasty, brutish, or whatever about it?
Sounds like a lot of other perfectly good words to me...

>As I remember, much of the anguished gnashing of teeth concerned not so 
>much its existence as its usefulness. Even though the word, in the lexical 
>sense, may be legitimate,  the very fact it caused gnashing says something 
>about its usefulness. 

How do you reckon that?  Special Relativity caused a lot of gnashing,
too.  In matters of language, gnashing about a perfectly common word
can be induced by the gnashing of one pundit's teeth.  Look back to
the 19th C's gnashing about "donate," "greed," or any number of other
words we find quite useful today.

>I will never use it, and do not wish it used upon me. 

Dean Swift felt the same way about "mob."  Would you have respected
his wishes?

>I imagine there are those in the business of making golden purses out of 
>the public ear to whom the word may be useful in that it allows them to 
>write only one word in the place of two. But I am sure their interest in 
>music is far different from mine, i.e. the logistics of transporting bass 
>viols and timpani or the enhancement of box office receipts vs. the actual 
>pleasures of music itself.

I do so agree.  Music would be so much better without musicians.

Seriously, though, what are you saying?  That we shouldn't consider
how music is made when we speak of it?  That we should expect musicians to
live on air and play for the glory of art?  (I'm not a musician
precisely because that one was tried out on me once too often.)

And if you like music so much, why speak of those who let you hear it
in such disparaging terms?

>Fowler probably puts his pen on the particular offensiveness of 
>"concertize" to the general ear when he comments: "Most verbs in -ize are 
>inelegant. Sir Alan Herbert has compared them to lavatory fittings, useful 
>in their proper place but not to be multiplied beyond what is necessary for 
>practical purposes." 

Yet the general ear (Unless you've recently been promoted to General) 
doesn't give a flying at a rolling about words ending in "-ize."  Nor
is the simile particularly acute, as words of *any* kind are coined all
the time for all kinds of purposes, and "-ize" words don't have any
particular place.

Note also that Fowler can't tell you *why* the words are inelegant, 
or what "Elegance" has to do with appropriate speech, nor can he
state what Sir Alan had said in his own words, preferring merely
to drop the quotation in there without comment.  (This passage
gets posted to the group about once a month, and is still one of
Fowler's lesser efforts.)

>I have much the same reaction to the word "prioritize" -- both the first 
>and the last time I shall write the word myself although, alas, not the 
>last time I shall see it. What sometimes seems forgotten here is that 
>simple correctness of grammar no more ensures good writing or usage than 
>mere legality invariably produces justice.

OK: what's bad about it?  Show your work.  repeated use of "alas" will
not constitute proof.  "Prioritize" can be, and usually is, used in 
correct usage, and often in good writing as well--by any standard
of good writing I've ever encountered.

Roger