3 ms·

> Just say "use"! It sounds far less pretentious and means the exact same thing. It's a pet peeve as well, but they don't mean the exact same thing; you "use"

• pmoriarty 5y ago
  "you "use" a doorstop to hold a door open, you "utilize" a shoe as a doorstop." Really? Because I'd use a shoe as a doorstop. I'd never "utilize" anything. Update: Well, on doing a bit of research in to this instead of just using my intuition, I found that you're absolutely right about the special meaning of the word "utilize", according to a number of sources like [1]. I guess I must have been too hard on those people who were properly using the word. Still, a survey of articles on these terms shows I'm far from the only one for whom the word "utilize" sounds pretentious, so in ordinary, non-specialist language I'd still err on the side of caution and use the word "use", which can in fact be used correctly everywhere "utilize" is used. There's a good discussion of various points of view on this issue in [2]. [1] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-utilize-a-word-worth-using https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-utilize-a-w... [2] - https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19811/using-utilize-instead-of-use https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19811/using-util...