Recently a colleague of mine mentioned to the leaders of a local association that we needed to "incentivize our members." I gagged. Incentivize is an awkward, artificial, self-important word created when highly-paid management consultants (I have no idea where the blame lies, but management consultants seem like a reasonable guess.) decided to make incentive into a verb.
A few days later, he wrote me, saying my reaction had prompted him to see if incentivize was in the dictionary. He was kind enough to include two results of his search.
The first, from dictionary.com, fully accepts its use. The second, American Heritage Dictionary, agrees. I am glad the two sources have concretized the correctness of the usage.
Although I find most 'ized" words unpleasant, I will acknowledge that at least they do maintain the meaning of the core word. "Have concretized the correctness of the usage," may be unwieldy prose, but it does convey the sense of solidifying the meaning.
I have greater wrath for times when people speak, but are on poorly programmed autopilot. The mouth never engages the brain in what it's saying. Here is one of the more common examples:
The lost logic of subjective and objective case pronouns. Folks, it's really pretty simple to get these right, IF YOU THINK. Subjects do things. Objects receive the action done by the subject. Mary (subject) thanks Lou (object). If I replace Mary's name and my name with pronouns, the sentence becomes, "She (subjective pronoun) thanks me (objective pronoun)."
Easy, right? So why does it become so hard when more than one person is involved? Because, people aren't thinking about what they are saying. The person who would never say, "She thanked I," thinks nothing of (because he or she is not thinking at all!) saying, "She thanked Paul and I." Wrong! She thanked Paul and me. Adding another name does not suddenly change me from me, object, to I, subject.
Sadly, I know I am tilting at windmills. When this case confusion was an error of the less-well educated, hope of change existed. Unfortunately, it is now common among the well educated. I recognized the beginning of the end had started while watching coverage of Bill Clinton's first inauguration balls. Former journalist, Harvard grad (cum laude), and now Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, addressed the crowd. "I want to thank all of you who have been so kind to Tipper and I."
The late Ferdinand Ruge, grammarian extraordinaire and Gore's English master at Washington's elite St. Albans School, must have looked down from heaven in dismay, as he watched his most famous student get it wrong.
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