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February 2010In Case You Were WonderingThe term proselytize jumped into the Top Twenty for a few days last month, following Brit Hume's public advice to Tiger Woods. The conservative commentator advised the philandering Buddhist golfer to turn to Christianity. The use of the verb proselytize doesn't attract criticism from linguistic conservatives these days. But it's part of a class of verbs that has been subject to the scorn of language mavens for ages. In particular, jeopardize (in the 19th century) and finalize (in the 20th) have irritated some writers. Believe it or not, folks had been preaching against the process of turning nouns into verbs by adding -ize for close to a century by the time proselytize first saw print. But the -ize coinage (claimed by Thomas Nashe) is seemingly here to stay, so we won't bother trying to convert anyone's thinking. In case you were wondering, proselytize is certainly one of these new-fangled -ize coinages that drive some folks crazy (think finalize, prioritize and utilize). Originally, back in the 14th century, the noun proselyte named a convert. By the early 17th century, proselyte also functioned as a verb (meaning to make a proselyte of or to make or attempt to make proselytes of). Within 50 years, the verb proselytize had appeared in print, and it didn't take long before proselytize supplanted proselyte in common usage. |