Pet peeve #562
July 22, 2007
People who say ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use’ to sound fancy and knowledgeable. This happens on Wikipedia and similar sites much too often nowadays, and it has to stop.
If you are one of those people who ‘utilize’ this word in their daily vocabulary, please, don’t. It doesn’t make you sound fancy, it doesn’t make you smarter. You sound like an idiot who’s trying too hard.
Yes, I know that it’s in the dictionary, and that is absolutely no excuse. Sesquipedalian is also in the dictionary, but we still use ‘long’. It sounds less awkward and people know what we’re talking about.
So, next time you catch yourself saying ‘utilize’, please stop and ask yourself whether the situation really calls for utilizing sesquipedalian nomenclature. I’m prepared to bet the answer will be a resounding no.
Edit: I was pointed to an explanation of the nuance that separates use and utilize. It turns out that ‘utilize’ does have a distinct nuance, as it means ‘to use something not normally used in this situation’. As in “I utilized a knife instead of a screwdriver”.
However, my rant remains, if slightly modified: people utilize ‘utilize’ all the time when they actually mean ‘use’, and that profoundly annoys me.
Thanks to Pedrov for pointing me to the article, I can now be a much more efficient terminology nazi!