What's the difference between "Use" and "Utilize" in common English?

[elfs]

None, motherfucker. Now stop using it that way. You don't sound cool or technological or even smart. You sound like a pretentious prick.

Comments

[slutdiary.livejournal.com]

???

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Did the subject line not come through? It says, "What's the difference between 'use' and 'utilize' in common English?"

You have no idea how many times I've read job offers where they want to know how often I've "utilized a technology." Like Wordpress. Or Joomla. Those aren't "technologies," they're programs or, at best, program platforms. And you don't "utilize" them, you "use" them. It's the most over-used form of pretentious "Look, I can write geek too!" in writing right now, and I'm just plain sick of it.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

We use "Simplified Technical English" (STE) at work. STE has a small vocabulary. Each word in STE has a single meaning. STE reduces confusion. STE is easy to understand. English majors hate STE. Engineers and programmers love STE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_English

[slutdiary.livejournal.com]

Yeah, saw that - just didn't know where the vehemence came from, the immediate context.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Well, the anger is in part due to not having a job and yet having to apply to idiot job posters who think they're communicating "smart" and "all together" when in fact they're just being idiots.

Maybe...

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

They're trying to fool their HR bosses into thinking they're smart and edumacated. They know better than to put one over on the technicians.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I'm often talking to the listings I find, as in "yes, I can see you desperately need an admin since you can't even seem to spell - hire me!".

Is irritating, but not worth the energy to get so angry over.

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU

[(Anonymous)]

Everyone knows you don't utilize technologies. You leverage them.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I thought camping was supposed to relax you. Sheesh.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was very relaxed during camping and hiking. Out in the woods, away from the hurly-burly. Coming back and diving into the stream of job searching and all that? That's not relaxing. Especially not when someone sends me a job description in which I am expected to "program in word press. Please be able to show three samples of website utilizing this technology." (All typos in the original).

Wordpress (it's a proper noun, one word: "Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org)") is a blogging program that can be used as a content management system, and you can write add-ons to it for nifty things like portfolios and press releases. The job posting set me off because it was such a mishmash of marketroid idiocy I couldn't help but shout into the void.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

The only time that one should use, "utlilize," instead of utilizing, "use," is when one is attempting to avoid overrepetition of the same word.

That said, a job-posting is not fine literature, nor an academic paper for a university class, nor an essay. There should be no repetition in it. So yes, yes they were being pretentious ignoramuses.