When should you use "utilize," or should you always utilize "use"?

[Interrobang]

Style guides usually recommend that writers avoid the word “utilize” and use “use” instead. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is particularly blunt: “Utilize. Prefer use.”

This web-based style manual goes into a bit more detail:

usage, use, utilize, utilization Use is usually the preferred all-purpose word as a noun and verb. Usage means habitual or preferred practice in grammar, law, manners, diplomacy and certain other fields. Utilize is overstated, pretentious and formal. Simplify. Try using use: He used the dishwasher. Not: He utilized the dishwasher.

I have no quarrel with this advice – most times that I see “utilize,” “use” would have worked better and seemed more like casual speech, almost always a good thing for good writing. (The dishwasher example above is a perfect illustration.)

But I do wonder: are there circumstances in which “utilize” is a better – or even a more correct – word choice than “use”?

[DeVena]

You would typically utilize the word “use” when you are writing a very simple sentence.

And you’d use “utilize” if you just wanted to show off.

[Nametag]

Yes. To utilize something is to make it useful, to give it utility in performing a task. For example, makers of bulletproof vests use Kevlar; before that, however, they utilized Kevlar in the design of the bulletproof vests. A recent craze for vividly colored skiwear resulted when an entrepeneur utilized scraps of synthetic fleece to make new fabric.

[brianmelendez]

Yes. From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage 934 (1994):

utilize Usage writers dislike utilize because they regard it as a needlessly long and pretentious substitute for use. They generally recommend either that it be disdained altogether or that it be used (not utilized) only when it has then meaning “to turn to practical use or account.” That is, in fact, almost invariably the meaning of utilize in actual usage:

<Scientific knowledge, for example, is developing exponentially–faster perhaps than our culture can . . . utilize it wisely> -Milton S. Eisenhower, Johns Hopkins Mag., February 1966

<. . . suggesting novel ways of utilizing Barnard’s facilities> -Jamienne Studley, Barnard Alumnae, Winter 1971

<. . . women who want to work at jobs that utilize their fulkl potential> -Bella S. Abzug, Saturday Rev., 7 Aug. 1976

Use could certainly be substituted for utilize in any of these passages, but not without some loss of connotation. Utilize is a distinct word having distinct implications. More than use, it suggests a deliberate decision or effort to employ something (or someone) for a practical purpose. Its greatest sins are that it has two more syllables than use and that it ends with the dreaded -ize. It is a common word, nevertheless, and every indication is that it will continue to be one.

Likewise, from Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1998):

use; utilize; utilization. Use is the all-purpose noun and verb, ordinarily to be preferred over utilize and utilization. Utilize is both more abstract and more favorable connotatively than use.

[daniel801]

You use a method.
You utilize a methodology.

[auntnut]

How much wood could a woodchuck ch…
oops…
sorry…
my bad…
misunderstood the theme of the thread.
as you were!