Utilize this!
/The utilization of our English language has changed markedly just in the past decade. I hope you will utilize this little essay to reflect on your own utilization of English. You can utilize it to question your own choices, but you might also utilize it to reflect on the English you hear utilized daily by on-air personalities. Happy utilization!
Barf!
Let’s reset: This morning I used a skillet and a spatula to fry my eggs, and then I used a knife to butter my toast. Naturally I used a fork to eat the eggs. When it came time for clean-up, I used dish detergent from that amazing new container that makes use of an entirely new technology I so love – no cap to open and close... just squeeze.
Breakfast finished, I turned to a document I needed to read for my job as a member of the local school board. Here’s a snippet of what I read: “All staff utilize the training and professional development tracking sheet. Additionally, teachers utilize Educator Effectiveness with their administrators. The district is also utilizing CRM...”
Are you catching on? Do you see how we’ve gone off the rails? Or do you actually believe that “utilize” is the proper or formal version of “use” and we just never realized it until recent years? Because it ain’t, folks! I told you that back in September 2016 in an article called “Why the $10 word, folks?” I told you how my friend Sharon Green and I had shot each other exasperated glances and rolled our eyes as we listened to a webinar together back in 2012. As I reported in that original essay, “We both wanted to scream, ‘Use, for heaven’s sake. Use! Just use the button. Use the function. Use the doggoned knowledge base. What’s with the ‘utilize’ thing?!’”
Yeah, that was 2012 – my first confrontation with this self-conscious linguistic overkill. Back then we were neophytes: It was my first time encountering this wacky attempt to sound “professional” and “authoritative” by selecting (over and over!) a word with a totally different meaning – but bearing the imprimatur of so many more syllables! Imagine the marketing message one might use to promote “utilize” in place of “use”: Triple your impact with three times as many syllables! Knock ‘em dead with “utilize” while your very ordinary colleagues stick with little old “use.” And, for a short time only, get half off on our amazing 5-syllable noun, “utilization,” five times more impressive than little old “use.” Why sound ordinary when you can sound professional and erudite and oh, so impressive?
As I said above: Barf.
Should you still be under the misimpression that “utilize” is somehow a more formal or professional use of the word “use,” let me disabuse you of that notion right now. THE TWO WORDS HAVE TWO DIFFERENT MEANINGS!
Use: to put into service, make use of; the act of employing or putting into use
Utilize: to use for profit; to use for a purpose not originally intended
In my book, To Hell in a Handbasket, I offer these examples:
I use toothpaste to brush my teeth; you might utilize it to make pottery.
If you don’t have an oar, maybe you could utilize a shovel to row your boat.
Use a broom to sweep the floor, but utilize a toothbrush if that’s all you have.
I would so like to ask people who now use “utilize” and “utilization” all the time what they think they’re achieving. As I posited in my 2016 piece, “Maybe ‘professionalism’ now hinges on selection of the largest, most pretentious word possible, and ‘utilize’ beats ‘use’ in both letters and syllables. It must be better. And they both mean the same thing, right?” NO, THEY DON’T – yet! And therein lies the bigger problem: Common usage does, over time, change our language. Like any bad habit, continued misuse can become ingrained in our behavior, and then the original, correct version can be completely lost. Consider this: If you now use the word “utilize” 14 times in a report that, had you written it ten years ago would have applied the word “use” 14 times, what’s now happened to the word “use”? Gone.
So, who cares, right? Wrong! Here’s why you should care: Two different word choices offer nuance to our language. Ninety-five percent of the time one simply uses a tool or such; rarely does one actually “utilize” it for profit or for an odd-ball application (like a toothbrush to sweep a floor). But, if a whole generation grows up believing the correct word is “utilize” – that there is no such thing as “use” – we have now lost a word! It’s gone from our cultural vocabulary, giving us one option where we used to have two.
And it’s happening with other words too. Consider the misapplication of “may” to mean “might.” You rarely hear or read the word “might” anymore. It used to be that “may” meant permission and “might” meant probability: You may cross the street, if you insist, but you might get hit by that big truck. These days “may” is used for both cases: permission and probability. That reduces the nuance of our vocabulary, rendering us less flexible and specific and clear in our meaning. Does that not matter to you? No? Well, then, utilize away!
If you do care, I urge you to read that original piece, “Why the $10 word, folks?”, in the Speakeasy. I offer opinions from several respected sources including “Fumble Fingers” who comes right to the point: “utilize” and “utilization” don’t give your statement gravitas; they just make you sound pretentious. So, when in doubt (or 95% of the time) just use it and move on.