Seriously? People are asking for metaphorical extensions of scientific terms to make literal sense? Haven’t we been through this in a million threads?
Language doesn’t give a rip about logic or rationality or original usages. People use epicenter to mean center or, more specifically, the place from which stuff emanates, because they like the sound of it. That’s all that matters.
And it is an accepted part of the language. This very good column on epicenter quoted the American Heritage Dictionary usage panel on the usage.
Can epicenter be used wrongly, even in this loose metaphorical sense? Sure. As soon as a word enters the language somebody somewhere will use it wrongly.
You see the wonderful subtlety in that? Despite being a loose metaphor that separates its meaning from the formal scientific original, epicenter as a place of origin still has an implied rule of it own: it describes a source for something that emerged, not a deliberate placement. Users, therefore, have a shared understanding of the meaning of the metaphor and err only when they try a second extension that violates that shared understanding. Will the second extension become a standard usage of its own someday? Possibly. But not today.
[rant]And that’s why descriptivism works while prescriptivism doesn’t. Prescriptivists wouldn’t allow epicenter as a metaphor in the first place. Descriptivists acknowledge one - useful - extension of the language but caution that a second extension is not yet part of good writers’ vocabularies. That adds to knowledge rather than subtracts from it, as prescriptivism does.[/rant]
I don’t want to be the epicenter of attention, but I’d like to see a cite for that one. I’m thinking that they were in a bunker but damn, who volunteers for that?
I’m not a prescriptivist - I’m fine for using epicentre where it fits *metaphorically *- for something dynamic and dangerous - I’m OK with “The epicentre of the Ebola outbreak”, say.
Just using where centre is perfectly fine, like : “London is the epicentre of fashion”, remains dumb. Not prescriptivist, just dumb language. Trying to be cool and failing miserably. It’s not a question of “allowing” usage, it’s a question of *judging *the aesthetics of that usage after the fact.
I think it would definitely be appropriate to speak of the ‘epicenter’ of an underground explosion, but I personally have never heard of anybody doing that.
I disagree. I would say that all of these are using epicenter to indicate the location of highest intensity, whether its Ebola or Fashion. This matches to a large extent the scientifically correct usage with regard to earthquakes. The reason people are interested in where the epicenter of the earthquake is, is so that they know where the earthquake was most intense.
I’m from the school that says “use” and “utilize” do not have precisely the same meaning. When writing I usually think carefully about which one to choose. “Utilize” suggests using in a positive way. I can use someone’s ignorance to cheat them, but my body utilizes the nutrients in my food to repair wounds.
If we eliminate the word “utilize” from the lexicon because “use” will do, we’ve just destroyed a bit of English’s capability for expressing nuance. It’s like saying we shouldn’t use the words “scarlet” or “vermillion” because “red” will do. In some circumstances, yes, “red” might very well be a writer’s wisest choice. But we should keep the other words around for situations where they are a better fit.
Epicenter’s metaphorical use did start with dynamic or dangerous. Call that stage 1. It then went well beyond.
You’re at stage 1. Other good writers have taken it at least to stage 2. A stage 3 may be upon us soon.
The issue for both readers and writers is how these stages are considered. There is a vast difference between “I wouldn’t use stage 2 myself” and “I think anybody who uses stage 2 is dumb.”
That’s where prescriptivists get a foot in the door. They might say that nobody should use epicenter metaphorically, i.e., stick to stage 0, or else bend a bit and say that it’s allowable to go to stage 1 because everybody agrees that it is acceptable - and therefore it is invisible. Invisible usage is usage that no one would ever mark you down for. It’s safe, and uncontroversial, and conservative.
Strictly adhered to, the language would simply stagnate if everyone obeyed those edicts. That would be fine with them. It’s not the way language works and it would be detrimental to the language long-term but it’s never actually wrong. Better never to be wrong than to be interesting.
Real-world language accrues thousands of these extended meanings over time. No two people ever agree which set of extensions is correct. (I’d argue that includes prescriptivists, which makes them unconscious hypocrites, another reason to reject the stance.) Worse, some extensions start off as true solecisms and become accepted over time, which infuriates just about everybody. (And some supposed solecisms, like split infinitives, are and always have been perfectly acceptable, except to troubled minds.)
It’s all a mess and always will be. I already made the important point: Real-world language accrues thousands of these extended meanings over time. Accept that, and the rest goes down much easier.
He got the story basically right, but they were volunteer military officers and not scientists.
It was a contrived test. Note that the bomb was relatively small, and the explosion was set quite high. My relatives in Southern and Central Utah would have received more radiation from the fallout.
Bombs in a real attack would be much lower and much stronger. Being on ground zero is not the right place.
This is another example of something half remembered being taken out of context.
That’s definitely not my association with the word. I associate it with overly verbose technical language such as military procedure manuals. It also smacks of the writing of aspirational second-language Commonwealth speakers.
So when I see “utilize”, I expect to see the writer is either a Marine cook writing about using a cooking stove, or a civil servant in Mumbai or Nairobi writing about using a taxi…nothing particularly positive there.
Maybe you associate it with positivity because you don’t interact with too may second-language Colonial English speakers? I always find their word choices stilted and too formal.
It was the only test firing of a nuclear-armed air-to-air weapon. Having volunteers under the detonation point would demonstrate something useful: that nuking Soviet bomber formations would not also be nuking Canadians beneath the combat.
Utilize’s early history is one of positives. A Google Book search shows that while a simple “use” could probably be substituted, there’s a shading of meaning that implies a more technical process is at work.
The counter to this explanation is that these and other early uses almost uniformly appear in formal proceedings, where a longer and more impressive word might be favored over a plain, ordinary one. And if people saw utilize only in this context, later users (utilizers?) might naturally assume that they could impress with it as well, a vicious cycle.
If I hear of someone using drugs, I think that I should Just Say No. If I hear of someone utilizing drugs, I wonder what medical condition they’re treating. So I think that CairoCarol probably has a point.
There is a use/utilize distinction. “Utlise” puts the focus on the thing made use of; it is rendered useful, or turned to account. “I utilized the fruit to make jam” suggests that the fruit might perhaps otherwise have gone to waste, and points to my productivity and resourcefulness in preventing this from happening.