You can pessimize a program, I guess for those times when neither
optimizing nor deoptimizing (or even optimizating) [1] will do.
--- Stuart
----- Original Message -----
From: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To:
Sent:Tue, 14 Aug 2018 10:52:08 +1000
Subject:atw: Re: New skill set required
Yes, Michael.
Have found references to (but not usages of) a few wonders such as
impossibilize and difficultize. Which seem vaguely appropriate in
context.
This is all amazeballs to me. I find a few of these are awkwords and
while I don't want to be a buzzkill, and would prefer to chillax, I
find many of them are just clickbait. They leave me confuzzled
and have me reaching for my camphone to see if I can lens or google
some meaning out of them. I must be due for some me time and
should probably take a daycation.
--Peter M
On 14 August 2018 at 09:49, Michael Lewis wrote:
There is, indeed, a "licence to -ise or -ize" a lot of things; it's
what's called a productive suffix. The problem isn't the act of
neologising itself; it's a failure to understand how it works.
F'rinstance, I doubt whether anyone on this list would object to
"randomise" or "industrialise", both of which start with an adjective,
or "capitalise", which starts with a noun. But in all those cases the
relationship between the "-ise" word and the root is something along
the lines of "make the root a characteristic of whatever you are
applying the new word to". Make it random, make it industrial, turn it
into capital. But "laymanise" appears to mean (or at least it's
inventor appears to want it to mean) "make it suitable for a lay
person". (Howard's example of "laicise" means that, albeit in a rather
specialised sense, because it means "make lay", or "make
non-clerical".)
All that said, an earlier post assigned blame to marketing people,
and I have yet to see any marketing person (or even a person suffering
from a marketing mindset) worry about "understanding how language
works"; for them, language is a lump of putty to be shaped at will and
forced into any convenient orifice. Usually they appear to insert it
into the wrong orifice, but they don't care . . .
- Michael Lewis
On 2018/08/14 09:16, Peter Martin wrote:
Well, there you go. Looks like a licence to -ise or -ize
anything you like. I'm off to toastize a couple of crumpets
and get grumpy over being found out as an old grumpised pedant.
Apparently the New York Times is to blame. And here I was
thinking Trump couldn't get anything right....
Links:
------
[1] https://www.wordnik.com/words/Optimizating
[2] mailto:mlewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
