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> No it doesn't, the sense of increasing a preexisting quality is not what -ize does. It just makes verbs. I didn't mean to imply that it started with some non
by wlesieutre 10y ago
> No it doesn't, the sense of increasing a preexisting quality is not what -ize does. It just makes verbs.
I didn't mean to imply that it started with some non-zero amount, but I thought "make something X" wasn't as clear. At any rate, I think it's fair to say that something fossilized is more like a fossil than it was before it got fossilized.
> "burgle" isn't the normal verb, both "burgle" and "burglarize" emerged at about the same point. Two different ways of turning an old noun "burglar" into a verb.
One of those ways matches the pattern used for any profession word ending in "er" or "or" (swimmer, actor, etc). The other is a silly exception in a language that already has plenty. All I'm saying is that every other English speaking country did it the sensible way, and I like that way better.
I've never heard anybody say "beggarized", so at least we did the sane thing with that one.
- colechristensen 10y agoI think your core confusion is assuming burglar is a verb + er as in "burglar is one who does burgle", but it isn't. -er comes to English from germanic languages Burglar is a loan word from French, directly. It doesn't use -er/-ar/-or. It might seem like that... and that's why "burgle" was created, but "burgle" isn't the "normal" word, it was created to follow a common pattern in English, but -ize is just as valid and is very old. It's no silly exception, it's just how words are used. No one would say beggarized, because beg is already the root word. "burgle" wasn't already a root word. It seems like it might have been but it wasn't.
- wlesieutre 10y agoMaybe I should just learn Esperanto or some other more consistent language...