From: peter.churchill@rose.com (peter churchill)
Subject: Re: Concertise   1/ 2
Organization: Rose Media Inc, Toronto, Ontario.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 21:38:31 GMT
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Date Entered: 01-11-93 16:23

How jolly it is to wake up in the morning and find you have been 
rogered during the night!

In message 1993Jan11.042636.4241@Princeton.EDU  
roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) with disingenuous diffidence 
asks: [referring to my distaste for the word `concertis(z)e']
 
> Um, what's graceless, dissonant, nasty, brutish, or whatever about it?
> Sounds like a lot of other perfectly good words to me...
 
Sounds like a satisfactory definition of `tin ear'.

[A bit of argle-barle deleted...]

> >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?

What I might have done about `mob' then I do not know, but I doubt I 
would have followed his ideas on the solution of the Irish problem. 

> >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.

This disappointed me. I think really good rogering is best done with a 
straight poke rather than a snide sideswipe -- especially a sideswipe 
at an imagined target.
 
> 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?

I'll tiptoe around this one since rogering in poisoned wells is not to 
my taste.
 
> >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.)

Of course Fowler can't tell us *why*. It is one of those ineffable 
things that go without saying -- especially when talking about words. 
You either know it or you don't.   
 
> >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. 

In good rogering the use of "alas" more than once, something I rarely 
do, is probably redundant although repetition with a lass is more than 
acceptable.  

>"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.
 
Of course "P-----" can be correct usage in good writing but only in 
the same severely circumscribed circumstances as indicated for 
"concertize". My comment was directed against the sense I seem to 
derive from many postings: that a word useful in few particular 

 Continued in next message.
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