From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Concertise   1/ 2
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 23:48:20 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.213835.18651@rose.com> peter.churchill@rose.com (peter churchill) writes:

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

How horrible to log on and find that one's case has lowered itself 
on someone...

>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'.

Right.  "I don't like it" = "It's bad."  I've heard that before.  Sorry,
but "if you can't tell then you have a tin ear" won't do.  Especially
not when talking to a musicologist...

>> >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.

Hey, it's not imagined!  Musicians are the ones who have to move their 
instruments, and who have to live off the proceeds of the concert.

>> >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. 

Yeah.  

>You either know it or you don't.   

Or you think you know it.  Einbildung ist auch Bildung.  8-)

>>"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 

Leave us hanging like that, will you?

Roger

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