New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill that would ban all state contract work from being performed outside the country. ... The reality is that the viability of many businesses depends on keeping costs down by performing some tasks off-shore. Prohibiting U.S. companies from utilizing workers overseas would add to the government's procurement costs.
Do you see any distinction between use and utilize?
Originally posted by shufitz: Do you see any distinction between use and utilize?
I don't. There is supposed to be some slight difference between the two words and utilize also has a narrow financial meaning (convert from an investment trust to a unit trust), but they are mostly synonyms.
use/utilize Use "use." "Utilize" is the awkward verb form of the obsolete adjective "utile." Why bother?
Here's a Usage Note from the AHD Online (boldfacing mine):
quote:
A number of critics have remarked that utilize is an unnecessary substitute for use. It is true that many occurrences of utilize could be replaced by use with no loss to anything but pretentiousness, for example, in sentences such as They utilized questionable methods in their analysis or We hope that many commuters will continue to utilize mass transit after the bridge has reopened. But utilize can mean “to find a profitable or practical use for.” Thus the sentence The teachers were unable to use the new computers might mean only that the teachers were unable to operate the computers, whereas The teachers were unable to utilize the new computers suggests that the teachers could not find ways to employ the computers in instruction.
TinmanThis message has been edited. Last edited by: tinman,
In High School Language courses they tried to get us to use different terms throughout an essay. We would utilize one term in one sentence, and employ others later on in the essay. We could exploit our large vocabulary in an effort to convince the reader we actually knew what we were talking about, and even that we actually knew the meaning of the words that we wielded.
I always thought it was a bit silly. For example, we read The Once and Future King , or at least, some of it, I don't think anybody in my class of 30 actually read the whole thing, just large chunks of it. We had to write a ~4 page paper on it, and my teacher told us not to say "Arthur" every time, but to mix up "the king", the "leader of the round table", etc. This seems sound enough, until you realize most people just don't have that many titles, and it is distracting to both the writer and the reader. My father was not happy about many of the things I was taught in High School.
my teacher told us not to say "Arthur" every time, but to mix up "the king", the "leader of the round table", etc.
I've noticed this is far too common in newspaper reports. Once they've given someone's name, they often go to great lengths to ensure they never mention the name again. Reports which mention a number of people can be really confusing sometimes, as the reader is forced to re-read sections to work out the circumlocutions.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
