Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Maybe BURGLARIZE should be a keyword ;-)

    
    	In defense of the author of this topic, I must say that it is
    	tough for a new participant in this conference to fully familiarize
    	(is that anything like burglarize...) himself with the entire
    	contents of the conference.  
    
    	When I join into an established conference I generally 
    	try to become fully acquainted with all the material contained 
    	therein.  In an effort to do that with JOYOFLEX I extracted 
    	the entire conference into a file on my system, printed it 
    	out and took it home one night.  (I nearly had to use a 
    	hand truck to take it out to my car...)  I made notes on 
    	things I wanted to add, and then felt free to start topics 
    	on things I thought weren't yet mentioned.  I really wanted 
    	to avoid causing someone to add a reply like 500.1 (and
    	I am not criticizing 500.1 -- in fact I think it was entered
    	in a very tactful and friendly way).  So what a surprise I 
    	had when I got exactly that on my "P's and Q's" topic.  It 
    	seems that the topic was already discussed in a previous note
    	somewhere around reply 100!  (Again, no criticism of the reply
    	pointing out the previous discussion...)  Obviously I did not
    	read the entire conference word-for-word...
    
    	With some of the topics going into the hundreds for the 
    	reply count (and I won't even discuss association football!), 
    	it is sometimes difficult to avoid this type of occurrence 
    	when new participants arrive.  Just an observation.  And a plea
    	to look upon us rookies with a smile!
    
    	Have a nice day.
    
    
    	Joe Oppelt

    re .2
    
    What an eloquent defense (or is it defence???)!  I must admit I
    did expect to find this as a title to a note, and not half way
    through a note!  However, I have no upsets about someone pointing
    me in the right direction.  So to my defender, I say thank you but
    your eloquence was unneccessary!
    
    stuart

    The linguistic term for the process of making a new word from
    an existing word when there's already a form of the existing
    word that does the same job is "back formation."
    
    Sometimes the new formation has a subtly different meaning
    from the old word.  For example, you'll hear the verb "commentate"
    on network TV sometimes.  It refers to the job a commentator
    does, and it's not quite the same thing as the perfectly good
    verb "comment" [on]. 
    
    But in many cases back formations just happen.  It's just
    something languages do.  If I kept my linguistics texts in the
    office, I could cite some examples from the Greek and the Latin,
    too. 
    
    --bonnie

    Yes Bonnie, (we meet again), I *do* understand the principle of
    back-formation.  Moreover, I recognise that many back-formations
    are of subtly different meaning.  What annoys me so much is the
    use of back-formations that do not have different nuances in meaning,
    particularly when that back-formation is more complicated than the
    original such as in the case of burglarize.

    Some formations such as anaesthetist are already difficult enough 
    to wrap one's tongue around and spell without complicating it even
    further in a manner such as anaesthesiologist.  It appears that
    often these formations are an attempt to blind the reader / listener
    with pomp and contribute nothing to the meaning.  Is an anaesthetist
    any less skilled at making you comatose than an anaesthesiologist?
    
    English is a difficult language at best and I certainly dont want
    to see the English equivalent of the Academie Francais but it would
    be nice to see the language used in a straight-forward manner.
    
    Stuart
    

    re: .5
    
    >                  Moreover, I recognise that many back-formations
    > are of subtly different meaning.  What annoys me so much is the
    > use of back-formations that do not have different nuances in meaning,
                             .
                             .
                             .
    > Some formations such as anaesthetist are already difficult enough 
    > to wrap one's tongue around and spell without complicating it even
    > further in a manner such as anaesthesiologist.  It appears that
    > often these formations are an attempt to blind the reader / listener
    > with pomp and contribute nothing to the meaning.  Is an anaesthetist
    > any less skilled at making you comatose than an anaesthesiologist?
    
    But they do have slightly different meanings.  An anaesthetist
    administers anaesthetics.  An anaesthesiologist studies (and
    may also administer) anaesthetics.  All anaesthesiologists are
    physicians.  Anaesthetists need not be.
    
    Sid

    G'day,
    
    Once again the structure of the US Health System has had need to
    coin a new word... In Australia and the UK, an Anaesthetist is fully
    qualified in all aspects of his Profession, I believe. I'm pretty
    sure they are qualified Doctors also.
    
    Dj
    

    While the etymology of .6 is probably correct, the usage then is
    dubious.  An anaesthesiologist is one who studies anaesthesia, agreed,
    and an anaesthetist is one who practices anaesthesia.
    
    I don't know about you but I think I would much rather have someone
    who practices anaesthesia knock me out than someone who studies
    it!  After all, I could study anaesthesia, be correctly called an
    anaesthesiologist by the etymology, and yet would you trust me to 
    put you under ?

    It could be said that every anaesthetist is an anaesthesiologist while
    they were learning, could it not ?
    
    So, with thanks to .7, my case rests.  The desire for a pompous
    sounding job title strikes again.

re .5

>    English is a difficult language at best and I certainly dont want
>    to see the English equivalent of the Academie Francais but it would
>    be nice to see the language used in a straight-forward manner.
    
An interesting comparison. Just last night I heard that one of the Presidential
candidates here in France (Jacques Chirac?), wants to spend enormous sums of
money 'protecting' the French language even more than they already do. It made
me wonder if the effect will eventually be to make the French language
stagnate.

I've read numerous discussions here about the fact that English is a 'living'
language (with particular thanks to our cousins in the US, Australia,
Geordieland, and other nether reaches of the globe). Long live English! 

But preferably without words like 'burglarize' :-)

	Steve

    re:.5
    
    What a back formation is, whether it's more or less complex than
    an already existing word, etc., etc. is all irrelevant. As far as
    has been determined in the other note without more detailed
    etymological research --- and with the apparent support of the
    OED (see 325.39) --- "burglarize" *came first*, with "burgle"
    being a later (though not by much) back formation. If that is indeed
    the case, than "burgle" should yield "right of way" to the other.
    
    There are plenty of other words in which the back-formed verb is
    more "complex" than the source. Do you also want to take issue with:
    
    (1) jeopardize ("If he isn't careful, he may jeopard this mission.")
    
    (2) dramatize  ("They want to dram that short story for the stage.")
    
    or even --- God help us! ---
    
    (3) anesthetize ("Nurse, would you please anesth the patient?")
    
    
    --- jerry

    As the author of 325.39 I think I'm called on to clarify what I said,
    although I thought I had bowed out of the discussion. I _didn't_ say
    `burglarize' came first; I said OED's earliest reference is to
    `burglarize'. My note also tried to cast doubt on the process whereby
    the dates were found. I didn't say something else that I found in my my
    SOED, but would have put it in my note if I'd had more time and had
    known anything much about the Latin that was once extant in England
    [not just a clever-clever word - I'm hedging my bets, because I don't
    know if anyone actually spoke it]: as early as the fourteenth century
    there was the word `burgulare' meaning `do what a burglar does'. I find
    it hard to believe that speakers of English did without a word for
    _that_ for nearly five centuries; if there _was_ such a word, the OED
    didn't find it; perhaps the English were happy, for those five
    centuries with a back-formation that was coll/joc. 

    Erratum: Incidentally, I wrongly attributed original authorship
    of the OED to the Fowlers.  Wrong.  It was Murray.

    b

    Re .10:
    
    I have no problems with jeopardise, dramatise or anaesthetise. 
    My use of 's' in these words is not by accident (although I accept
    Am usage of 'z' but prefer to use 's').  The etymology of these
    words does make 'to jeopard', 'to dram', and 'to anaesth' very unlikely
    verbs.
    
    Interestingly the use of -ise and -ize also depends on the etymology.
    
    -ise is from the French -iser
    -ize is from Latin -izare in turn from Latin -izein
    
    So, as strange as it may seem, in spite of goodness knows how many
    years of wars between France and England, they have a bond other
    than the Channel Tunnel!  (Although I suspect in reality the English
    have the Norman invasion to thank for the -ise suffix).
    
    stuart
    

    I would think that "burgle" and "burglarize" derive
    from Latin "burgus":fortified castle; which also gave
    German "Burg", French "bourgeois" etc ...
        
    	roger

    Good thought ...
    
    We therefore have an alternate chess term ...
    
    to burg        meaning   to castle
    
    hmmmmmm .....
    
    
    stuart
    

    re:.11
    
    Well, I said "As far as has been determined in the other note
    without more detailed etymological research --- and with the
    apparent support of the OED (see 325.39)..."  I phrased my
    comment specifically this way to indicate that the etymology
    was in question, and that the OED *apparently* supported the
    idea of "burglarize" coming first. The reference to your note
    was only given as a citation in support of the previous part
    of the sentence. I didn't intend for it to suggest that *you*
    were saying anything definite about the subject in question.
    
    re:.12
    
    I think it's pretty much accepted that use of "-ise" or "-ize" is
    equivalent and depends on country of origin of the noter and/or
    personal preference. I originally wrote my note using "{s,z}" in
    place of the "z", but it looked stupid, so I just used the character
    that I'm used to.
    
    I fail to see the distinction in etymology between "burglary -->
    burglarize/burgle" and "jeopardy --> jeopardize/jeopard".
    
    As for you earlier comments about simplicity versus complication,
    it should be noted that language always develops in the direction
    of complexity. Words are built up, not reduced. If a noun-form is
    more complex than a verb-form, it's because the verb-form came
    first and the noun-form was built up from it. If the verb-form is
    more complex, it's because the noun-form came first.
    
    The term "Back-formation" was specifically coined to refer to
    words that *do* go "against the grain", as it were, and are formed
    by reducing the original word to a simpler form. In most cases
    (and "burglary" is one such), it's done by removing what is per-
    ceived to be, but is actually not, a suffix. Even when one is
    accepted as a legitimate word (as in "edit" from "editor"), back-
    formations in general are abnormal.
    
    So, I still maintain that by the usual process of creating new
    words (or new forms of words), "burglarize" is a more reasonable
    derivation of "burglary" than "burgle" is.
    
    --- jerry

    Surely a differnce between burglary--->burgle and jeopardy--->jeopard
    is burglar vs *jeopardar?
    
    Phillip

    Somewhere in another note (the -ize) one I mentioned the possibility
    that the B volume of the OED might have been a one-man effort. In
    fact it was not one man but two.
    
    The history is this.  The multi-volume work that appeared in 1933
    as the Oxford English Dictionary was in effect a reprint of the
    New English Dictionary started by John Murray towards the end
    of last century. The NED wasn't published in volumes but in 
    fascicles, and Murray worked on words beginning with the letters
    A-D from 1883 to 1888; but in 1885, when he'd reached Batten
    on his own, he was joined by Henry Bradley. In what is now
    (in the OED) the A-B volume, the earliest example of `burglarize'
    is dated 1883.  As the fascicle of the NED that contained the
    word must have been published towards the end of the period
    1885-1888, the citation was almost as current as you could
    get, given the typesetting technology of the time; it seems
    unlikely that it had been researched - more likely just found
    in contemporary reading matter.
    
    No idea how the `1883' of the OED relates to the `1871' of the
    Shorter.  Perhaps an earlier reference turned up during work on
    the 1933 Supplement; I'd've looked, but for my son - who couldn't
    stand the Reference Section any longer, and wanted to know if
    I meant to read the entire A-B volume page by page (poor bloke,
    having a pedant for a father).
    
    b
    

    re .17
    
    Thanks for the efforts you put in on the research.  It seems quite
    fascinating.  I wish we had a large enough local library to accomodate
    various dictionaries ...  My daughter would definitely empathise
    with your son.
    
    Your research really puts mine to shame.  Mine has been in a couple
    of dictionaries that reflected what I was taught in school in Canada
    and England and as a result I suppose my ignorance is therefore
    showing.  In a nutshell, what I found was that -ize endings were
    predominantly Americanisations and that burgle was the "correct" term
    for the actions of a burglar.
    
    So, like the choice of the use of -ise and -ize, it is time to agree
    to differ.  I'll allow your home to be burglarized if you'll allow
    mine to be burgled!
    
    stuart

    I finally dragged out my mildewed copy of _Cases_and_Comments_
    _on_Criminal_Justice_ by Inbau and Sowle.  Its section on
    burglary is short, only three pages.  It contains the word
    "burglarize" three times, and is quoting on all three occasions.
    One quote is from Clarke v. Commonwealth [of Virginia], in 1874.
    Another is from Smith v. People [of Illinois], in 1885.  The last
    is from Section 943.10 of the Wisconsin Criminal Code.  "Burgle"
    is nowhere used.
    
    I do not think the courts or the legislatures of this country would
    use an informal term instead of an accepted, legal one.
    
    Part of the problem is the nature of the crime of burglary.  It is
    a 1) breaking and 2) entering the 3) dwelling of 4) another in the
    5) nighttime with the 6) intent to 7) commit a felony therein. 
    There are a lot of parts to it (and each part must be proved before
    there can be a conviction), so it is comparatively easy to speak
    of the different actions which comprise the crime rather than to
    use a term which "describes" the entire set of actions.
    
    							Ann B.

    I've been meaning to reply to this point for weeks:
    
 >       Interestingly the use of -ise and -ize also depends on the etymology.
 >   
 >   -ise is from the French -iser
 >   -ize is from Latin -izare in turn from Latin -izein
  
    This is an oversimplification (widely propagated by `English teachers'
    and their disciples.  If anyone can impose a rule based on etymology 
    (I don't believe they can) the rule would be based on not two
    cases but at least five:
    
    1	Some English words derive directly from a Greek word formed
    	_in_Greek_ with a Greek suffix: baptize < baptizein
    	(as I remember there is no z in Latin, although the s may have
    	been pronounced [z] in certain contexts)
    
    2	Some English words derive from a French or otherwise Latinate
    	word created _in_French_ with a derivative of the Gk -izein suffix
    	(spelt -iser).  If the `etymological' rule applied, these would 
    	be written -ise.
    
    3	Some English words were formed _in_English_ with the -ise/-ize
    	suffix (e.g. lionize, bowdlerize). In N. American English, -ize 
    	is the only admissible spelling. Here in England, it's a matter 
    	of taste and/or house style. OUP and The Times favour -ize. Many 
    	other house styles (the only example I can cite off-hand is that 
    	of AA Publications) prefer -ise. 
    
    4	Some English words are back-formations from a noun with an s
    	or a t in the suffix - e.g. televise from television.  There's
    	no option here (though what they do in America is something
    	I'd rather not think about, in view of #5). The Br. English
    	is -ise.
    
    5	some quite innocent passers by, spelt with a coincidentally
    	punning -yse (e.g. analyse), are - in some parts of the world,
    	yzeized. Luckily, it's possible to get by in DCL with only the
    	first four letters of ANALYZE.
 
    To impose a rule based on an understanding of this lot (and a whole
    lot more that I suspect I've omitted) would be expecting the
    impossible. A common option, in England, is to spell everything
    with an -s-, at the expense of a few etymologies (like `baptize').
    Another option (which I prefer) is to spell -ize but only when
    there's an option: some spellings, like `advertise' and `analyse'
    aren't optional (not for writers of the Queen's English, anyway).
    
    I recognize that this latter option gives the -ize spelling to
    a few words that `should' (by the etymology argument) be spelt
    -ise.  But I'm faintly (not seriously) ruffled by people who -
    whenever I follow a Br. English practice with a tradition of over 
    a hundred years - think I'm flirting with Americanism.

    Bob

    I really do feel sorry for people who learn English as a second
    language for the number of so-called rules that they are taught
    that suddenly, after they have become comfortable applying them,
    have yet another exception.  It's hard enough when English is your
    mother tongue!
    
    When was the spelling of baptise changed to use a 'z' ?  I have
    always used an 's' and a quick nose into a Chambers Concise Dictionary
    (all I have to hand at the moment I'm afraid) only refers to baptise
    with an 's' .
    
    The comment about the suffix depending on etymology was an "also"
    not meant as a definitive "here's the rule".
    
    I have always prefered to use a 's' in a position where there the
    sound would indicate that either is possible.  Generally, I associate
    a 'z' with a harder, shorter, and crisper sound like 'zoo' or 'zebra'
    and a 's' with a longer, softer, and more lazy sound.  (In 'lazy'
    the softness comes from the 'y' rather than the 'z' so 'z' is
    appropriate).  Most '-ise' sounds fall into this softer category
    partly from residing in an unstressed syllable.  'Prize' is a
    mono-syllable and therefore stressed so the 'z' is appropriate again.
    
    You will probably be able to come up with exceptions to this 'rule'.
    Generally I notice that Americans tend to add more stress to the
    '-ize' syllable where Brits do not, which is maybe why I find many
    of the '-ize' words harsh and 'ugly'.  It is subtle so I'll probably
    get blown away on this thought.
    
    So I'll just Notarise this note
    
    stuart

    

    This has got nothing to do with "ize" but I thought you'd like to
    know:
    
    In "Trial by Jury", the defendant, on trial for breach of promise,
    suggests that he resolves his predicament by marrying both ladies.
    
    Judge:	"This seems a reasonable proposition, 
    		 to which I think your client may agree"
    
    Counsel:	"But I submit, M'lud, with all submission,
    		 To marry two at once is Burglaree!"
    
    Is there an etymological connection between Burglar and Bigamy?
    Or was W. S. Gilbert simply mutilating the language?
    
    (Anyway, it's obvious to me that a Burglaree is a Burglar's victim.
    By analogy with Interviewee, or Employee... :-))
    
    -- brian

    Every time I see a British -ise ending, I want to pronounce it
    "-ice"; I have to make a real mental effort to pronounce it in the
    intended way.
    
    --bonnie 

    Re .22
    
    This looks like a bit of poetic license attributable to one Mrs
    Malaprop.
    
    If a burglaree is a victim of a burglar, them one who is interviewed
    is not an interviewee but an intervieweree and one who is employed
    is not an employee but an employeree!  He who was interviewerized
    hopes he was employerized!
    
    
    re .23
    
    You seem to be reinforcing my thoughts there bonnie, the way we
    pronounce it has a lot to do with the way we spell it.
    
    '-ice' is a logical extension from the idea of the hard 's' used
    at the start of a word like 'soft'.  The soft 's' appears at the
    end in plurals.  Been stung by any 'beece' or 'beez' lately ?
    
    stuart

re Burglaree:

W.S. Gilbert frequently substituted "ee" for a final "y" to indicate a long 
e sound rather than a long i sound.  I don't know whether it was a personal 
spelling quirk of his, or whether he was following someone else's tradition.
It's conceivable that he did it just to irk Sullivan in some obscure way.

Why does the Counsel confuse burglary[ee] with bigamy?  I've always seen 
the Counsel played as a bit of a buffoon, trying to impress the ladies of 
the chorus with his legal knowledge - and screwing it up.  The ladies, it 
turns out, are impressed anyway.  What can I tell you - well-motivated 
characters are scarcely hallmarks of the early G&S works.

So I don't think Gilbert had any deep etymological pun in mind - nothing 
beyond the superficial similarity of the two words.

    Teensy technical question (re G$S): is bigamy having two wives
    or marrying two brides? If the latter, then the second wedding
    - although leading to a bigamous marriage - wouldn't itself
    constitute bigamy.  Since the action in `Trial by Jury' was about
    Breach of Promise, maybe the counsel was making the point that
    the second wedding would involve taking something without permission
    from the first bride.
    
    Just a thought.
    
    b

    re: the -ee ending in G&S songs --
    
    In the early 1800's, the -y ending was pronounced "eye" in many
    parts of Britain; you can see evidence of this in poems that rhyme
    words ending in -y with other long-i sounds rather than with the
    -ee sound most of us would use today.  I believe it had class
    connotations, but I'm not familiar with the details. 
    
    I suspect Gilbert uses the -ee ending to clarify which 
    pronunciation he wanted. 

    --bonnie