This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I almost opened the Department of Pet Peeves, which I run, to make the point revealed in this blog headline:  Words that are made up by adding three letters – “ize” – should not be real words.

There is no need for them.  One of my pet peeves.

Then, I read a column this morning in the Wall Street Journal by essayist Joseph Epstein, and he made the point far better than I could.

As I have written before, I consider myself to be a “words person,” one who likes words better than charts and graphs, or even photos.

So it was that, when I still worked in my old lobbying and public relations company, I balked with one of my partners started to use the word “catalyze.”  What in the world did that so-called word mean?

Yes, it’s nearly an “ize” word, using a “y” instead of an “i.”

If I would have used it, the word would have raked across my tongue, so I demurred.

In addition, my partner was a great friend – and still is, despite his use of “catalyze.”

To read Epstein’s column is to learn more about this word fantasy – the use of “ize” words, such as the one in vogue today in politics, “weaponize.”

Under this headline — IN OUR DIVIDED TIMES, LET’S NOT ‘WEAPONIZE’ OUR LANGUAGE – here are excerpts from Epstein’s column.

• All new words are dubious until proven necessary, useful or charming.  Change being in the very nature of language, new words seek entry with a high frequency.
• Perhaps none do so more than that group of words that began life as nouns and adjectives and seek new life as verbs by adding the syllable “-ize” to their tail.  H.W. Fowler’s magisterial “A Dictionary of Modern English Usage,” first published in 1926, noted of the “ize” appendage that “within reason it is a useful and unexceptionable device, but it is now being employed with a freedom beyond reason.”
• Thus over the years the language has added such words as “publicize,“ “finalize,” “prioritize” and “incentivize.”  Of “finalize,” Fowler commented that “there can be few occasions on which the neologism finalized is an improvement on completed or finished,” though he allowed that “publicize can put up a good defense against a charge of being merely an unwanted synonym for publish.”
• “Most nouns and adjectives converted into verb status were inelegant, or so Fowler felt.  One reason for their popularity, he believed, is that “those engaged in the advertisement and entertainment industries think, perhaps rightly, that the look and sound of them” will appeal to the public.
• “As examples, he noted that “we may be expected to respond more readily to an invitation to slenderize than to slim” and “more likely to buy a preparation that moisturizes the skin than one that merely moistens it.” I-Z-E, those three little letters, have been called in to do a lot of work.”

As for the word “weaponize,” Epstein says politicians lately can be depended upon to avail themselves of it in accusing their opponents of unfairly using whatever is at hand to score points.

For example, he says that, in Democrats’ view, House Republicans are “weaponizing” the Hunter Biden investigation.  By contrasts, Republicans contend that Democrats, hoping to gain voters eventually by allowing an influx of migrants at the southern border, are “weaponizing” immigration itself.

Since departing the presidency, Donald Trump has frequently claimed that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” against him.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), if elected president, pledges to “end the weaponization of government.”

But, Epstein, with me, suggests ending “the weaponization of “weaponization,” which is so often used it has no meaning, falling into the category of “vogue words.”

Epstein ends with this:

“At a time of national divisiveness, one strongly reflected in our two political parties, the regular use of the word ‘weaponize,’ with its built-in hyperbole, doesn’t help.  The sooner that hyped-up, inelegant word departs the language, the better.  In rhetoric as in other realms, disarmament is sometimes required.”

I end with this.

Beyond my partner’s use of the word “catalyze,” my frustration with “ize” words was heightened by the word “prioritize,” as is in, for example, “I want to prioritize this issue in my political campaign.”

Wouldn’t it be better just to say, in my campaign, “I’ll focus on this top priority issue?”

Yes.