Leverage

[jack]

This is copied from my response to vyvan's disturbing and insightful response about language development here because I thought it was interesting enough to share.[1]

Question: Why do I object to words like 'leverage(v)'?

* Making new useful words. No problem, I like that.
* Losing useless words. No problem, people don't have to say them if they don't want to. If I do, I will, and they'll probably understand :)
* Creating new words similar to old words. Even a slight shade of meaning *can* be useful -- think of english as a space of concepts with nodes at the words, where we normally choose the best, and it has a penumbra about it of meanings it could apply to, and gaps with no good word are filled in by imprecise description or synonyms ('no, "love" in blah and foo!'); then shades let us be more precise by choosing the right one, and if people don't notice we've only lost a bit, or by using several shades to triangulate even more precisely.
* But there are reasons I don't easily accept:
* Complete (generally longer) synonyms of existing words annoy me. Probably because it seems sloppy and I like well-defined and optimised things, and thinking there *is* a correct answer of some sort. I have no justification for this preference.
* New formations often depend on misconceptions, such as confusing singular/plural. Sometimes I don't mind, but often it riles me just because it seems to be accepting ignorance, and I (to misquote Speaker for the Dead) have an almost pathological reliance on the idea that the more people know the better. There's some truth here, but a lot of preference.
* Relating to the last-point-but-one, I (and many people I love) love playing with language, using exactly the correct word, and making up new ones in what seem to me good ways, and shoe-horning new (even useful) words interferes. Just us.
* Random annoyance at people who and I have difficulty communicating[2]. I remember extremely frusting someone who wanted to "lend" something of mine, genuinely not understanding.
* Subculture. People I know and like tend somewhat to be more pedantic about it, and people I don't less.
* Conservatism. We have a working langauge. It changes naturally, but there's no reason that should make it better, so I resist. A little objective sense here, maybe. But rather futile.

OK, that was cathartic. But as yet almost all preference, no good reasons.

[1] We need a system with good crossposting.
[2] I'm assured this sentence makes sense. I wanted to make it symetrical, not "with whom" or "who with me", to not imply the fault was mine or theirs.

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

I can relate to most of that, especially being annoyed by long pretentious new words that are synonyms for short useful old ones. That's my real beef against "leverage". I don't have a problem with words that are long or obscure, as long as their use is justified by a precise shade of meaning or the atmospherics of the piece of writing. (It's like that word "cleave" that I was talking about this morning. If I'm writing about someone's helm in a fantasy battle, I would be quite happy saying it was "cloven in twain", but that would sound ludicrous in the context of a piece of card I had just guillotined!) But I just can't see that there is any more precision to be had from "leverage" than from "use" (or "use to advantage" if one absolutely insists), and the only atmospheric it gives is "I want to sound as if I know what I'm talking about, even if I don't", which is not one for which I've ever had a great deal of sympathy.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Good point. I said things often used by ignorant people annoyed me; things often used by people trying to sound clever do even more. (Though no idea where 'leverage' should be.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Are synonyms OK if you need them to fit your metrical or rhyming scheme? If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. OK, go on then. Though obviously *better* if they're a good new word in other ways as well. It is lovely when you see a completely new word completely clear from context and sound.

If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think I feel its ok because it is being useful. Though words tortured to fit are annoying, think how you choke when a word is truncated or stress-changed unnaturally :)

Re: If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Presumably whoever coined 'leverage' thought it useful too. I think I've said this before recently but I don't understand why verb leverage attracts so much deprecation; allusion and (a bit less so) zero-derivation are more widely accepted in other cases, and there are loads of cases where people fail to use the simplest possible word that will fit without provoking a whisper of complaint. I suspect it's more to do with who uses it than the word itself, but I'm not sure how to prove this.

Re: If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I somehow assumed the management-speak use was borrowed from the finance use which I assumed established 'leverage' (noun) as a concept, until it was a word enough to support modifying it rather than backtracking when you want a verb.

That is, that it would drift from when a business advantage was being magnified by borrowing to when you're trying to imply that, to when you're just saying "make money by using".

Of course, that doesn't contradict your saying it was considered useful.

I don't know why leverage; I think it attracts ire as a common example of a class many people find annoying, why? -- I tried to examine that in my post, and found some understanding but no reasons.

Re: If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

That is, that it would drift from when a business advantage was being magnified by borrowing to when you're trying to imply that, to when you're just saying "make money by using".

This one took about 6 passes to parse at all :-) I challenge any automated parsing program to reach a most plausible parsing of that sentence.

I'm sorry if I haven't participated in this discussion in general; I'm ridiculously busy for the next week or so.

Re: If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

This one took about 6 passes to parse at all :-) I challenge any automated parsing program to reach a most plausible parsing of that sentence.

Yeah, I tend to do favour such sentences; most people find it annoying, but some people seem to fall in love with me, making it I guess a good parallel for management dialect :)

I challenge any automated parsing program to reach a most plausible parsing of that sentence.

Google's to-german-and-back attempt is "That is, it would drive this of, when a business advantage was increased, by borrowing too, if you try to suggest too, if you make straight lines Saying "money are, by using". " :)

I'm sorry if I haven't participated in this discussion in general; I'm ridiculously busy for the next week or so.

Thanks. Your first comment seemed reasonably comprehensive, don't worry :) What are you doing?

Re: If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

What are you doing?

OU work, of many sorts. Deadline pile up (4 different tasks urgently need to be done by Monday).

Re: If so then why is it OK for poets but not for whoever first said leverage?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah! Good luck with that. I won't be surprised if you come back and coda each post in the discussion after that, then :)

[rjw76]

I remember extremely frusting someone who wanted to "lend" something of mine, genuinely not understanding.

I feel it worth pointing out that there might well have been dialect coming in to play here. That one's quite common in Yorkshire, along with "learn" for "teach".

[cornute.livejournal.com]

Is that "lend" as in, they meant "loan" something of yours [to someone else], or as in they wanted to "borrow" something of yours?

"Borry" is used for "loan" here for someone who talks the old way-- "Borry me your shears a minute" = "loan me your scissors for a moment." And yes, "learn" with an immediately following direct object is exactly equivalent to "teach."

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Also, for some reason, I feel happy at yorkshire dialect but annoyed at management dialect... Again, no reason.

AFAIK it wasn't Yorkshire[1], but good point.

[1] I have *occasional* Yorkshirism inherited from Grandma.

[naath.livejournal.com]

In what way is leverage used as a verb?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You've really never seen that?

In finance, it means magnifying an advantage. If you think that price of foo is essentially random, but will converge eventually to the price of bar, you can trade them in opposite directions and make money. But they're going to be slightly different, so you borrow money, and use it to trade, and then (good) you pay it back and you've made lots but (bad) if it goes wrong you're in the hole for trillions[1].

In management speak you leverage your [assets] and [key skills] to [make the company better]. It's almost invariably synonymous with 'use', since no-one's suggesting you *don't* use your advantages, the question is what they are. Though several people in the previous post (http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/169343.html) said they thought it was relevent because "leverage our foo" implies your foo is your strong point, whereas "use" doesn't.

[1] Not necessarily an exagaration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Term_Capital_Management)
[2] "Off-balance-sheet activities" should probably be written so; wikipedia's "Off-balance sheet activities", while normal, tends to imply going to bed and missing which, while embarassing, doesn't tend to futz the whole stock market :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm curious what [2] was a footnote to.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It's a floating footnote. It felt like something that should be mentioned, as it's used in the wikipedia article, and is funny, but not an obvious follow up to any word sequence in my post.

I occasionally use unantecedanted footnotes for this, and I'm sure I've seen other people do too. I think it makes sense because:

* It needs to go at the end. Where else?
* It fits the footnote mode in that it's useful but not necessary information
* Most people *I* know love reading footnotes, and people who don't would probably also want to skip this.

It could have been a PS but I think this is funnier.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

I'm sure vyvyan could put it more coherently (or just disagree with me :-), but I get a feeling that a lot of these "leverage", "utilize", "facilitate", "ball-park" etc. words used all too often in management-speak get picked up on partly because it marks the speech as being in the context of business rather than everyday life. By (subconsciously) choosing a particular set of words for the meaning you want to convey, you both mark yourself as part of a particular community, and also make a separation between you-the-individual and you-the-project-manager (or whatever).

Geeks do this all the time too, frequently drawing analogies from computer systems to everyday life. "I couldn't parse that", "sorry, stack overflow" &c.

I find it easy to slip into the speech patterns of whatever group I'm talking to. It's a bit disturbing when after two hours of business meetings you suddenly notice yourself talking in a very different idiom to your normal one.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. I think I mentioned there, or in the last post, that it's representative of a subculture. Geeks say which way to the cinema "satisfies the euler-lagrange equations" instead of "is shortest" which is equally frustrating to listeners :)

I certainly pick it up too. One difference seems to be the geek way does carry real information in some context, but that's not inherently better. Both do also convey "I've spent time with your subgroup, and hence are likely to know things you know."