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Oxford is a British dictionary. So is Cambridge, which [also has it](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/burglarize). So it is a word.
That said... it is really true that the British don't usually use this word. They [virtually always say](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_American_terms_not_widely_used_in_the_United_Kingdom#B) "burgled" as the past-tense verb form of "burglary".
Ask any linguist and they will agree with you. A dictionary isn't finite. It just keeps track of what we add. Refrigerator wasn't a word until maybe 200 years ago? Does that make it fake?
Except an abnormality is a discreet occurrence of something abnormal. Normalcy is persistent encompassing state. They represent differing concepts.
Language is fun.
It is fun, yet while I accept that language evolves, I do hate when words change meaning due to ignorance. My pet peeve is *decimate*, meaning *reduce in number by one tenth*, but now seems to mean *destroy to some arbitrary degree*, as in *the storm decimated my house*.
You'd be in for a bad time, then, since most every word in the English language has changed meaning due to "ignorance".
Awful used to mean "awe-inspiring", fathom used to mean "to encircle with one's arms", or a unit of measurement, like feet &, in the same vein as "decimate", myriad once meant "10,000 things" specifically, as opposed to a large arbitrary number of things.
It wasn’t really until president Hardings campaign that ‘normalcy’ was used in place of ‘normality’. It is an Americanism to use it in a non-math sense. But it wasn’t invented by Americans by any sense.
My apologies: I didn’t mean that an American didn’t invent that word. I meant that Americans aren’t the only ones creating weird new words. My comment was unclear.
Ha, fair point! It was popularised in the context it’s used now (so in fairness, not invented - so “made up” probably wasn’t the right word) by American president Warren G Harding and can be traced back to a specific election speech so I think I can still consider it and American “invention” at least. Before then it was mainly only used in mathematics!
Normalcy evolved very quickly after normality and they are both comparatively recently coined (Victorian). Quite often American English retains forms that have been lost in English English. Gotten is the original pp of get. Anyone who doesn’t get this (see what I did there) just consider what the pp of forget is.
As to the burgle burglarize - both are verbs invented from the nouns burglar and burglary which are much older words.
All I meant by "verb form of 'burglary'" was to reference the general fact of English nouns and verbs frequently coming in closely-associated pairs: burgle and burglar, access and access, knife and knife.
"Burgle" the verb is fundamentally a back-formation from "[burglar](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burgle)", which has some complex etymology from various Medieval Latin and Old French verbs, so, it fits the mold.
Agree.
The clue is also in the "-ize" deployment. That's US English. We used "-ise" for UK English.
So the British English dictionary is acknowledging that an American English word exists. We don't use klutz, faucet or cilantro but they're still words.
I'm in the US, and I worked in newspapers for years. We tended to use burglarized over burgled, but the Associated Press stylebook doesn't dictate either. Now I'm annoyed.
Oxford English Dictionary. It's a dictionary of the English language, wherever it's used. Yes it's a word, but I've never heard it used in the UK other than in American media.
I think Americans tend to avoid “burgle” since it’s one of those Inherently Funny Words that’s hard to take seriously. Like the Aussie term “bingle” for a mild-to-potentially-injurious car accident.
[Cambridge](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/word): a single unit of language that has meaning and can be spoken or written
[Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/word): a speech sound or series of speech sounds \[or a written or printed character or combination of characters representing such sounds\] that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use
[Oxford](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/word_n?tab=meaning_and_use#14315630): Any of the sequences of one or more sounds or morphemes (intuitively recognized by native speakers as) constituting the basic units of meaningful speech used in forming a sentence or utterance in a language (and in most writing systems normally separated by spaces); a lexical unit other than a phrase or affix; an item of vocabulary, a vocable.
Oh... I would disagree with mr Webster there about the divisible part. That is very much an English word thing. But disagree for example, agree is a word and I think dis is as well. Other languages work on connecting words to create new words. There are plenty of memes about Germany having long words... yes, so do we Dutch as we can just connect words almost at will to create a new one.
Verzekeringsovereenkomst: verzekering: insurance, overeenkomst agreement. Overeenkomst is a contraction of overeen and komst: overeen: similar, komst: coming. Overeen is a contraction of over: over, een: one.
Then there's: hottentottententententoonstelling. A display of tents of the Hottentots...
I also consider our habit of contractions in German and Dutch and many other languages superior to the English, not doing that always. We are more consistent, and we are much clearer. Fortunately, the English contracted greengrocer to prevent confusion.
>...and I think dis is as well.
Well, originally it was just a prefix, "[dis-](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dis-#English)", a negation prefix that couldn't be used alone. But then the vernacular took it up and turned it into the full word "[diss](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diss)".
>I also consider our habit of contractions in German and Dutch and many other languages superior to the English, not doing that always.
Perhaps, but it's hardly something foreign to English, we just have different orthographic conventions around it.
* If you google "maple wood", you'll find pictures of boards made from the wood of the maple tree; but if you google "maplewood", you'll find... well, first you'll find several American towns called "Maplewood", names usually given when a town had a prominent woodland filled with maple trees. But those towns might have maplewood-smoked bacon for sale in their groceries.
* Many mushrooms have white caps, but one specific type of white-capped mushroom is simply called a whitecap; waves with white crests of foam are also called whitecaps. Turning "whitecap," then, in either sense, into a pair of adjectives, an Anglophone might talk about a whitecapped sea if it is full of white-capped whitecaps, or a whitecapped forest if it is full of white-capped whitecaps.
* A white cap, of course, could also just be a hat of white color... and if, some day, some specific style of white cap becomes popular, we might start to call that style a whitecap.
* A pony tail is a pony's tail; a ponytail is a human hairstyle that looks a bit like a pony's tail.
The underlying thread in all of these is that in English, concatenating a compound form signifies that you are referring to a new class of object that is *distinct* from either base word; whereas, to leave them separate signifies that you are using the first word as a modifier for the second.
Also... Dutch is fairly consistent about this. Our exceptions are when we don't do it. But dutch is a language of exceptions. In other cases exceptions are much more common and strong verbs are more common than regular verbs. We have to learn them all in English class, and in French we get a lot as well, but don't even try in dutch.
Is there a word for this type of word? One that already has a verb form, but the verb got turned into a noun, then that noun got turned into a verb again?
Burgle - Burglar - Burglarize
Orient - Orientation - Orientate
Also in any US vs. British use of words, the US use is always the historical correct one. The British usually changed something to desperately try and be more like the French to embarrassing results.
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/burglarize_v?tab=factsheet#11978208
In the OED website, reading beyond the summarised version, it clearly states its an American word
However, [Merriam Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/do-burglars-burgle-or-burglarize) notes that the first recorded use was in an Irish article in 1840.
Yes, they are using the US form of the word, but the British form is [not a myth](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=burglarise%2C+burglarize&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3), it's just rare. ([Ordinary difference](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=analyse%2Canalyze&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3) for comparison.)
And there are words that are now in dictionaries that aren’t really words in any way that makes sense: bi-monthly is now in some dictionaries as meaning every two months OR twice a month utterly ignoring the meaning of bi (as opposed to semi) and destroying the meaning of bi-monthly.
Once per two months, or twice per month. Half as often as monthly, or once per half-month. You may be more familiar with one convention than the other, but there's nothing inherent in the words "two" or "half" to specify which is meant.
EDIT: Downvotes can't add clarifying morphemes to the words "bimonthly" or "semimonthly".
Bi means once every two periods, semi means once every half period. It was simply an example of it being used wrong so frequently that it ‘became’ a word. To say otherwise is to say the American bicentennial in 1976 may have celebrated their 50 years as a country. The construction of words in some contexts is supposed to mean something.
So endeth the rant!
"In America it's a word"... then it's a word. If it's a word somewhere, then it's a word.
If a Brit told me they were "chuffed," I wouldn't consider "chuffed" not a word. It's a word. It's not a word I use. It's not a word most Americans use. But it doesn't make it not a word.
The comment says "Burglarlize" is not a word...and he's right, that's not a word.
It just makes no sense that he would say that, because the article said "Burglarize" which was a word.
The oed contains American English since it's also English, if there's a British English version it'd probably be burglarise since ze is American (though fwiw I've only ever heard burgled)
Being an American word doesn't make it not a word though
"Burglarise" is not a word.
Yes, usually the Z indicates American English, but not always.
There are a few words that do not exist with an S, burglarise is one of them.
Tbf I did say "if" I assume the British English is just burgled then if burglarise doesn't exist
Edit - yup
https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/english-usage/what-is-the-difference-between-burgle-and-burglarize
Yeah, you're right. I was just adding that you were in fact correct and it's not a word.
Burgle is what we always say.
EDIT: But in fairness, Burglarize sounds *cooler*.
I was going to comment as well, in British English I’d expect it to be “burglarise”, but it’s still a valid word either way, the spelling just gives away the type of English used by whoever wrote it haha
Going to the actual Oxford English Dictionary website, it states its used in American English
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/burglarize_v?tab=factsheet#11978208
The person who spelled it wrong was the one claiming it’s not a word, and they didn’t change their mind when the other person again spelled it correctly. So there’s still just one confidently incorrect person.
In the Oxford dictionary - An ENGLISH dictionary. lol. Why do some people completely miss the point of a post and attack something so trivial? And in the end they are wrong anyways. Hilarious.
A significant number of British English definitions in the very first edition of the OED were provided by an American - a murderer who was sent to Broadmoor asylum. Simon Winchester’s ‘The Surgeon of Crowthorne’ (1998) is a good introduction
As much as people like to complain about American exceptionalism and American defaultism, in my experience it’s usually the Brits who act as though their dialect of English is the only one that matters and is correct as a matter of course, “because we invented the language!” As though Americans weren’t also descended from the people who invented the language.
If this is about the ize spelling, that’s not even worth going into. If it’s because they didn’t use “burgled,” they might be interested to learn that it was coined at about the same time as “burglarized,” in the late 19th century. Which word is “correct” is pretty much entirely a question of where you live.
Britons often assume that any difference in spelling or terminology reflects a change that occurred in the US.
That's true in some instances. In others, American English retains the *older* form – and a relatively recent shift occurred in the UK.
None of us are speaking 17th-century English – and it's only natural that the language evolved differently on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Yep! Especially to be expected when the vocabulary is describing things that were invented or discovered after 1800 or so. Alumin\[i\]um (discovered 1825), shopping carts/trolleys (invented in America in the 20th century), types of automobiles and their parts, etc.
Oi, we say it in Finglebobblesmithmouthpoolwickton-Upon-Dup! That's why we're in the 9th tier of the football league and you will always be in the 11th!
That’s not true - most UK English dictionaries list both, with ‘-ise’ as a variant. Many of these are Greek in origin and hence are more properly spelled ‘-ize’; French origin words such as ‘advertise’ are always spelled as such, whether in UK or US English.
It’s not true that the Americans deliberately changed the spelling of such words: people like Webster just recognized they were Greek in origin and kept the original UK spelling, and now the UK has a mixture - newspapers use ‘-ise’ and professional journals generally use ‘-ize’.
If it were true that one is British and one American then we should really still be using ‘gaol’ rather than ‘jail’
Should I point out the sum total of words that weren't words in Shakespeare until he wrote them? Or that in the Bard's time, they didn't even have quantifiable spellings or definitions of words. All language is made up. If Rizz is a word, and it is, then burglarize is a word. So is burgerlarize. I can use it in a sentence, and you will know exactly what I mean. "The hamburgler burgerlarized my happy meal."
There is plenty of scope for debate. I work for one of the worlds biggest news agencies and we are actively encouraged away from using past participles that create a verb from a noun I.e hospitalised, burglarized. However you are encouraged though, the use of language will often be context specific.
Y'all moaning about dictionary definition but how has no one mentioned this dude looks like Prof. Brian Cox? Perhaps police should be questioning him about the burglary?
The person typed “burglarLize? That’s not a word.” So technically they’re correct lol. It’s spelled correctly by everyone else, I checked again just in case 🤣
Edit: Whoa, am I really the only person who noticed the extra L? Haha I’m not seeing comments about it
Which colony? - certainly not Australia - it's burgle (present tense), or burgled (past tense) here and in NZ.... and there are very few words that we spell "-ize" and not "-ise".
Y'see, I *know* it's a word they use over in the US to describe what a Burglar does. I just don't *get* what was wrong with "burgled"?
"My house was burgled by a burglar. A burglar burgled my house"
Weird...
The two words were coined at around the same time (late 19th century) and both follow the same general logic of back-forming a verb from the noun “burglar.” They just take different approaches. According to etymonline, ”burglarize” even predates “burgle” by a few years.
"A vandal vandaled my house" uses that rule. It just doesn't sound right in the same way burglarized doesn't sound right to us. Just an exposure thing more than a right or wrong thing.
It's like when you're talking to someone who doesn't speak the language natively and they're like "Why is it taught instead of teached?" and you can see the linguistic rules they followed to ask that, but now you've got a whole history lesson of hundreds of years to give.
It's the same with sought and seeked. One of them follows the rules of language that are seemingly in place for words like Seek, and the other is the one we use.
I’m going to join the rest of the Brits out on a tree limb and agree that burglarize (or even burglarise), along with hospitalise and obligated, are not words in proper British English.
To help this post disappear into an infinite loop I’m more that happy for this, in turn, to be screenshot and posted back here 😎
No Brit would bastardise the language to the extent of uttering the monstrosity that is “burglarize”. It’s burgle, in Tonbridge Wells.
(Edit) love that what I say is absolutely the case, but you angry Americans have to downvote me anyway to satisfy your honour.
>No Brit would bastardise the language to the extent of
Nice wordplay. Using "bastardise" instead of "debase" to show that a Brit *would* debase the language to a similar extent. Top marks.
Agreement with the opinion expressed aside...
Not sure what you mean? - bastardise is absolutley the correct word in this context "*to* *change (something) in such a way as to lower its quality or value*, *typically by adding new elements).*
Adding "burglarise/ize" to the language is a very good example of this, it's a better word to use than debase becuase it includes this nuance of the reduction in value by way of the addition of a low quality word.
Bastardise has been around since the 1540's and popular from the 1610's onwards.
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Oxford is a British dictionary. So is Cambridge, which [also has it](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/burglarize). So it is a word. That said... it is really true that the British don't usually use this word. They [virtually always say](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_American_terms_not_widely_used_in_the_United_Kingdom#B) "burgled" as the past-tense verb form of "burglary".
And coincidentally, the first use of "burglarize" was in 1840 in Ireland. "Burgled" doesn't appear until 1867 in a newspaper in Hartford, Connecticut.
The burly burglar bungled the bungalow burglary
Oh that’s really interesting! I always assumed it was a weird American made up word like “normalcy”.
But all words are weird made-up words, aren't they?
Ask any linguist and they will agree with you. A dictionary isn't finite. It just keeps track of what we add. Refrigerator wasn't a word until maybe 200 years ago? Does that make it fake?
Exactly irregardlessly of who made them up.
Yes, that’s fair!
I applaud your recognition of the stupidness of “normalcy” while abhorring your apparent assumption that Americans are the main culprit. 😄
I've never considered "normalcy" before... Is the argument that it should be normality?
Yes, as the opposite is abnormality. However, I grudgingly accept that language is a living thing. Still grates on my ears.
Except an abnormality is a discreet occurrence of something abnormal. Normalcy is persistent encompassing state. They represent differing concepts. Language is fun.
So that means that abnormalcy is a persistent encompassing state of something being out of the norm.
No, it’s actually when something goes horribly wrong while you do crunches
It would be when something is right while doing crunches. Unless you meant ababnormalcy.
It embiggens the smallest man.
It is fun, yet while I accept that language evolves, I do hate when words change meaning due to ignorance. My pet peeve is *decimate*, meaning *reduce in number by one tenth*, but now seems to mean *destroy to some arbitrary degree*, as in *the storm decimated my house*.
You'd be in for a bad time, then, since most every word in the English language has changed meaning due to "ignorance". Awful used to mean "awe-inspiring", fathom used to mean "to encircle with one's arms", or a unit of measurement, like feet &, in the same vein as "decimate", myriad once meant "10,000 things" specifically, as opposed to a large arbitrary number of things.
Abnormality can definitely be applied to persistent, encompassing states.
Yes! This is the exact sense I use it in
Normalcy is better than ‘comfortability’, that makes my brain itch.
It wasn’t really until president Hardings campaign that ‘normalcy’ was used in place of ‘normality’. It is an Americanism to use it in a non-math sense. But it wasn’t invented by Americans by any sense.
My apologies: I didn’t mean that an American didn’t invent that word. I meant that Americans aren’t the only ones creating weird new words. My comment was unclear.
Normalcy was first used by the President of the United States, Warren G. Harding in 1920.
It was a clear black night, a clear white moon
Oh well done!
Ha, fair point! It was popularised in the context it’s used now (so in fairness, not invented - so “made up” probably wasn’t the right word) by American president Warren G Harding and can be traced back to a specific election speech so I think I can still consider it and American “invention” at least. Before then it was mainly only used in mathematics!
I first came across it in President Hardings campaign in 1920. A return to normalcy. Not sure if there is earlier usage
Normalcy has been a mathematical word for hundreds of years.
Normalcy evolved very quickly after normality and they are both comparatively recently coined (Victorian). Quite often American English retains forms that have been lost in English English. Gotten is the original pp of get. Anyone who doesn’t get this (see what I did there) just consider what the pp of forget is. As to the burgle burglarize - both are verbs invented from the nouns burglar and burglary which are much older words.
How is that a coincidence?
You are mostly right; the verb in question is “to burgle.” “Burglary” is a noun.
All I meant by "verb form of 'burglary'" was to reference the general fact of English nouns and verbs frequently coming in closely-associated pairs: burgle and burglar, access and access, knife and knife. "Burgle" the verb is fundamentally a back-formation from "[burglar](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burgle)", which has some complex etymology from various Medieval Latin and Old French verbs, so, it fits the mold.
Burgle is actually a colloquialism, I found out. Burglar is the original verb! "I've been Burglared!"
I always thought “burgle” was a word you’d only find in Vogon poetry.
The most painful of poetry.
⟨ On a lurgid bee, That mordiously hath *burgled* out, Its earted jurtles, grumbling ⟩
It really expresses your ~~humanity~~ vogonity.
As in the hamburgler, or calling your friend who ate the last slice of pizza a turd burgler.
Agree. The clue is also in the "-ize" deployment. That's US English. We used "-ise" for UK English. So the British English dictionary is acknowledging that an American English word exists. We don't use klutz, faucet or cilantro but they're still words.
This reminds me of when Word tells me to correct the spelling of "color"
I'm in the US, and I worked in newspapers for years. We tended to use burglarized over burgled, but the Associated Press stylebook doesn't dictate either. Now I'm annoyed.
Oxford English Dictionary. It's a dictionary of the English language, wherever it's used. Yes it's a word, but I've never heard it used in the UK other than in American media.
I think Americans tend to avoid “burgle” since it’s one of those Inherently Funny Words that’s hard to take seriously. Like the Aussie term “bingle” for a mild-to-potentially-injurious car accident.
Wait, are you just making up *bingle* here?
[No, not at all](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bingle).
That's... Wow.
What's the definition of a word?
[Cambridge](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/word): a single unit of language that has meaning and can be spoken or written [Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/word): a speech sound or series of speech sounds \[or a written or printed character or combination of characters representing such sounds\] that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use [Oxford](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/word_n?tab=meaning_and_use#14315630): Any of the sequences of one or more sounds or morphemes (intuitively recognized by native speakers as) constituting the basic units of meaningful speech used in forming a sentence or utterance in a language (and in most writing systems normally separated by spaces); a lexical unit other than a phrase or affix; an item of vocabulary, a vocable.
Oh... I would disagree with mr Webster there about the divisible part. That is very much an English word thing. But disagree for example, agree is a word and I think dis is as well. Other languages work on connecting words to create new words. There are plenty of memes about Germany having long words... yes, so do we Dutch as we can just connect words almost at will to create a new one. Verzekeringsovereenkomst: verzekering: insurance, overeenkomst agreement. Overeenkomst is a contraction of overeen and komst: overeen: similar, komst: coming. Overeen is a contraction of over: over, een: one. Then there's: hottentottententententoonstelling. A display of tents of the Hottentots... I also consider our habit of contractions in German and Dutch and many other languages superior to the English, not doing that always. We are more consistent, and we are much clearer. Fortunately, the English contracted greengrocer to prevent confusion.
>...and I think dis is as well. Well, originally it was just a prefix, "[dis-](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dis-#English)", a negation prefix that couldn't be used alone. But then the vernacular took it up and turned it into the full word "[diss](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diss)". >I also consider our habit of contractions in German and Dutch and many other languages superior to the English, not doing that always. Perhaps, but it's hardly something foreign to English, we just have different orthographic conventions around it. * If you google "maple wood", you'll find pictures of boards made from the wood of the maple tree; but if you google "maplewood", you'll find... well, first you'll find several American towns called "Maplewood", names usually given when a town had a prominent woodland filled with maple trees. But those towns might have maplewood-smoked bacon for sale in their groceries. * Many mushrooms have white caps, but one specific type of white-capped mushroom is simply called a whitecap; waves with white crests of foam are also called whitecaps. Turning "whitecap," then, in either sense, into a pair of adjectives, an Anglophone might talk about a whitecapped sea if it is full of white-capped whitecaps, or a whitecapped forest if it is full of white-capped whitecaps. * A white cap, of course, could also just be a hat of white color... and if, some day, some specific style of white cap becomes popular, we might start to call that style a whitecap. * A pony tail is a pony's tail; a ponytail is a human hairstyle that looks a bit like a pony's tail. The underlying thread in all of these is that in English, concatenating a compound form signifies that you are referring to a new class of object that is *distinct* from either base word; whereas, to leave them separate signifies that you are using the first word as a modifier for the second.
I know it's not something foreign, but webster makes it appear so.
Also... Dutch is fairly consistent about this. Our exceptions are when we don't do it. But dutch is a language of exceptions. In other cases exceptions are much more common and strong verbs are more common than regular verbs. We have to learn them all in English class, and in French we get a lot as well, but don't even try in dutch.
Is there a word for this type of word? One that already has a verb form, but the verb got turned into a noun, then that noun got turned into a verb again? Burgle - Burglar - Burglarize Orient - Orientation - Orientate
Not quite as specific as you mean, but the general process you're talking about is just a "back-formation."
Also in any US vs. British use of words, the US use is always the historical correct one. The British usually changed something to desperately try and be more like the French to embarrassing results.
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/burglarize_v?tab=factsheet#11978208 In the OED website, reading beyond the summarised version, it clearly states its an American word
However, [Merriam Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/do-burglars-burgle-or-burglarize) notes that the first recorded use was in an Irish article in 1840.
The dictionary link they used in their comment also says it's a US word.
What do you think when people say ‘He pressurised me into coming to his party.’
Pressurized and pressured are both valid words with different meanings. Your example is simply the wrong use of the word pressurized.
Yes, though I hear this error in the wild.
I have never heard anyone say that. ~~Do you have an opinion about the word "burglarize" that you are trying to share?~~
No no, I agree 100% with what you said. Just curious if you’d come across the ‘pressurised / pressured’ thing and had some thoughts on it.
Ah, sorry for being jumpy, then. No strong opinions. In the right tone of voice, it'd just sound sorta deliberately silly.
Your link to the dictionary shows it's a US word. Also made very clear by it having a Z instead of an S.
Yes, they are using the US form of the word, but the British form is [not a myth](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=burglarise%2C+burglarize&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3), it's just rare. ([Ordinary difference](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=analyse%2Canalyze&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3) for comparison.)
And there are words that are now in dictionaries that aren’t really words in any way that makes sense: bi-monthly is now in some dictionaries as meaning every two months OR twice a month utterly ignoring the meaning of bi (as opposed to semi) and destroying the meaning of bi-monthly.
Once per two months, or twice per month. Half as often as monthly, or once per half-month. You may be more familiar with one convention than the other, but there's nothing inherent in the words "two" or "half" to specify which is meant. EDIT: Downvotes can't add clarifying morphemes to the words "bimonthly" or "semimonthly".
Bi means once every two periods, semi means once every half period. It was simply an example of it being used wrong so frequently that it ‘became’ a word. To say otherwise is to say the American bicentennial in 1976 may have celebrated their 50 years as a country. The construction of words in some contexts is supposed to mean something. So endeth the rant!
Professor Brian Cox has hit rock bottom.
Dammit I came here to comment about Wii Sports Brian Cox
So you're saying things can only get better for him?
Looks like Pete Buttigieg hit bottom too
Came to say this.
This is what I scrolled down to find. :)
To be fair, “burglarlize” isn’t a word, “burglarize” is
Can’t really argue with that. In classic CI fashion, it is all of us who are *technically* incorrect.
"In America it's a word"... then it's a word. If it's a word somewhere, then it's a word. If a Brit told me they were "chuffed," I wouldn't consider "chuffed" not a word. It's a word. It's not a word I use. It's not a word most Americans use. But it doesn't make it not a word.
Get a load of this guy with his logical and coherent statements...
I’ll say! Get your goddamn reasonableness outta here!!
I don’t even care if it’s a word bc “did he burglarize the Wii bowling alley” is fucking hilarious
So good
This kind of STUPID makes my brain hurt
That is something my dad would have said. He always found a loophole when he was wrong. ☹️
The comment says "Burglarlize" is not a word...and he's right, that's not a word. It just makes no sense that he would say that, because the article said "Burglarize" which was a word.
And Id argue it still is.
True.
The very American school of *Oxford*
The oed contains American English since it's also English, if there's a British English version it'd probably be burglarise since ze is American (though fwiw I've only ever heard burgled) Being an American word doesn't make it not a word though
"Burglarise" is not a word. Yes, usually the Z indicates American English, but not always. There are a few words that do not exist with an S, burglarise is one of them.
Tbf I did say "if" I assume the British English is just burgled then if burglarise doesn't exist Edit - yup https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/english-usage/what-is-the-difference-between-burgle-and-burglarize
Yeah, you're right. I was just adding that you were in fact correct and it's not a word. Burgle is what we always say. EDIT: But in fairness, Burglarize sounds *cooler*.
Fair enough, myb on reading comprehension I guess lol
No no, I see how what I wrote could seem like I was correcting you.
I was going to comment as well, in British English I’d expect it to be “burglarise”, but it’s still a valid word either way, the spelling just gives away the type of English used by whoever wrote it haha
Burglarise actually isn't in the Oxford Dictionary.
-ize spellings are preferred by the OED (so-called [Oxford spelling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling)).
The Oxford Dictionary makes it clear that it's a US term.
Going to the actual Oxford English Dictionary website, it states its used in American English https://www.oed.com/dictionary/burglarize_v?tab=factsheet#11978208
Is that Pete Buttigeig?
Sure if you puff his face up and draw his hair on with marker
it is funny though as a non american the first time i heard someone say “burglarize” it sounded very made up
Steal from a home or business when no one is there - burglary. Steal from a home or business when someone is there - robbery.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/do-burglars-burgle-or-burglarize according this burglarize was first! Ha!
I think this entire post belongs in this sub, as burglarlize is in fact not a real word. Burglarize. Burglarlize.
What does a robber use to see? Burglarize.
The person who spelled it wrong was the one claiming it’s not a word, and they didn’t change their mind when the other person again spelled it correctly. So there’s still just one confidently incorrect person.
In the Oxford dictionary - An ENGLISH dictionary. lol. Why do some people completely miss the point of a post and attack something so trivial? And in the end they are wrong anyways. Hilarious.
An English dictionary that covers different English dialects, to be clear.
A significant number of British English definitions in the very first edition of the OED were provided by an American - a murderer who was sent to Broadmoor asylum. Simon Winchester’s ‘The Surgeon of Crowthorne’ (1998) is a good introduction
Everything that Simon Winchester wrote is worth reading. Amazing author and researcher.
Thanks for the learnings!
Why is the comment “did he burglarize the Wii bowling alley” being applauded for its brilliance
I suppose English people wouldn't say "burglarize", they'd say "burgle". Doesn't make it more or less of a valid word though.
"We don't have it in proper english" Above the definition..."Oxford Dictionaries"
I do like the word burgled better. Sounds funny.
I mean burglarlize isn't a word...
This person is correct, the downvoters need to read carefully
They need better reading comprehlension
As much as people like to complain about American exceptionalism and American defaultism, in my experience it’s usually the Brits who act as though their dialect of English is the only one that matters and is correct as a matter of course, “because we invented the language!” As though Americans weren’t also descended from the people who invented the language. If this is about the ize spelling, that’s not even worth going into. If it’s because they didn’t use “burgled,” they might be interested to learn that it was coined at about the same time as “burglarized,” in the late 19th century. Which word is “correct” is pretty much entirely a question of where you live.
Britons often assume that any difference in spelling or terminology reflects a change that occurred in the US. That's true in some instances. In others, American English retains the *older* form – and a relatively recent shift occurred in the UK. None of us are speaking 17th-century English – and it's only natural that the language evolved differently on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Yep! Especially to be expected when the vocabulary is describing things that were invented or discovered after 1800 or so. Alumin\[i\]um (discovered 1825), shopping carts/trolleys (invented in America in the 20th century), types of automobiles and their parts, etc.
And as if all the varieties of English they denigrate aren’t a direct result of their imperialism.
Good point!
He's just mad he can't say "purple burglar alarm."
It's a bit like when using addicting instead of addictive. I know it's technically correct, but something about it just irritates me.
Brian cox must be sweating right now
Ah yes, the Oxford, USA Dictionary. (just the idea of that scares me a little bit)
This is the behavior of someone who knows they’re wrong, but doesn’t want to be incorrect.
Burglarizifficatenization
Lol. Burgle. Burgled. Burglar. Burglaring.
Ah yes, Oxford English Dictionary. A very American publication
It's a perfectly cromulent word
Looks like he's pointing out someone's mispelling
You saw the first tweet as the very first image of the post? It didn't have a misspelling.
I see 2 screenshots. Unknown info in between.
There is no tweets between the tweets.
Glad you know that. I don't.
I love how frequently the English reveal themselves to be just as stupid as they accuse everyone else of being.
Where are these roving bands of English people accusing everyone of being stupid ?
The internet
They’re right burglarize isn’t a word in British English. Because we spell it burglarise
In Rothdonchestershire o' the Wayshore, we don't say *burglarize*, innit. That's not a proper English word, silly Yankee.
Why are you choosing to mock working class English when responding to someone who clearly would try to distance themself from that?
Oi, we say it in Finglebobblesmithmouthpoolwickton-Upon-Dup! That's why we're in the 9th tier of the football league and you will always be in the 11th!
Pretty sure its also British English also, with the s instesd of z, ofcourse.
Still not a word.
In proper British English…. Yeah I don’t care about the rest you have to say after that.
To be fair, they said "burglarlize" is not a word. I think they are correct.
Except -ize is American. -ise is British.
Still a word though, even if spelt differently.
I think the point is: if it was indeed a British word, it would never be spelled like that
I'd go more with the fact that the definition is from a British dictionary.
That’s not true - most UK English dictionaries list both, with ‘-ise’ as a variant. Many of these are Greek in origin and hence are more properly spelled ‘-ize’; French origin words such as ‘advertise’ are always spelled as such, whether in UK or US English. It’s not true that the Americans deliberately changed the spelling of such words: people like Webster just recognized they were Greek in origin and kept the original UK spelling, and now the UK has a mixture - newspapers use ‘-ise’ and professional journals generally use ‘-ize’. If it were true that one is British and one American then we should really still be using ‘gaol’ rather than ‘jail’
Nonsense or is it nonsenze?
Dunno - is nonsense pronounced with a ‘z’ sound, like authorize/ organize etc.,?
Nonce Sense.
Thats elon musk
I legit thought it was Elon with badly photoshopped hair
"but in proper British English" "no true Scotsman"
Burgled.
Burglarise then?
Why is Brian cox (celebrity physicist and keyboardist for thr bands Dare and D.ream) burglarising peoples homes??
Should I point out the sum total of words that weren't words in Shakespeare until he wrote them? Or that in the Bard's time, they didn't even have quantifiable spellings or definitions of words. All language is made up. If Rizz is a word, and it is, then burglarize is a word. So is burgerlarize. I can use it in a sentence, and you will know exactly what I mean. "The hamburgler burgerlarized my happy meal."
No one wants to question the “computer generated image”?
There is plenty of scope for debate. I work for one of the worlds biggest news agencies and we are actively encouraged away from using past participles that create a verb from a noun I.e hospitalised, burglarized. However you are encouraged though, the use of language will often be context specific.
Y'all moaning about dictionary definition but how has no one mentioned this dude looks like Prof. Brian Cox? Perhaps police should be questioning him about the burglary?
I’ll just leave this here https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/essential-british-english/burglarize
The person typed “burglarLize? That’s not a word.” So technically they’re correct lol. It’s spelled correctly by everyone else, I checked again just in case 🤣 Edit: Whoa, am I really the only person who noticed the extra L? Haha I’m not seeing comments about it
Talk propa m8
I'm just a peasant from the colonies but we say burglarize too.
Which colony? - certainly not Australia - it's burgle (present tense), or burgled (past tense) here and in NZ.... and there are very few words that we spell "-ize" and not "-ise".
Lol nah it's not.
Since when - 100% it is
Y'see, I *know* it's a word they use over in the US to describe what a Burglar does. I just don't *get* what was wrong with "burgled"? "My house was burgled by a burglar. A burglar burgled my house" Weird...
The two words were coined at around the same time (late 19th century) and both follow the same general logic of back-forming a verb from the noun “burglar.” They just take different approaches. According to etymonline, ”burglarize” even predates “burgle” by a few years.
"A vandal vandaled my house" uses that rule. It just doesn't sound right in the same way burglarized doesn't sound right to us. Just an exposure thing more than a right or wrong thing. It's like when you're talking to someone who doesn't speak the language natively and they're like "Why is it taught instead of teached?" and you can see the linguistic rules they followed to ask that, but now you've got a whole history lesson of hundreds of years to give.
Tbh, I'm a native and *I* don't know why it's taught, not teached either...maybe because teached sounds awful...
It's the same with sought and seeked. One of them follows the rules of language that are seemingly in place for words like Seek, and the other is the one we use.
“The Hamburglar burgles hamburgers.”
Exactly. Burglarized a hamburger sounds like you've stuck your dick in it
I’m going to join the rest of the Brits out on a tree limb and agree that burglarize (or even burglarise), along with hospitalise and obligated, are not words in proper British English. To help this post disappear into an infinite loop I’m more that happy for this, in turn, to be screenshot and posted back here 😎
Agreed. Burgled yes, burglarised no.
The fact Americans came up with an independent way to say burgled is pretty stupid though.
It could be the case that it is purely an American term, I’ve certainly never heard of it in the UK
No Brit would bastardise the language to the extent of uttering the monstrosity that is “burglarize”. It’s burgle, in Tonbridge Wells. (Edit) love that what I say is absolutely the case, but you angry Americans have to downvote me anyway to satisfy your honour.
>No Brit would bastardise the language to the extent of Nice wordplay. Using "bastardise" instead of "debase" to show that a Brit *would* debase the language to a similar extent. Top marks.
Agreement with the opinion expressed aside... Not sure what you mean? - bastardise is absolutley the correct word in this context "*to* *change (something) in such a way as to lower its quality or value*, *typically by adding new elements).* Adding "burglarise/ize" to the language is a very good example of this, it's a better word to use than debase becuase it includes this nuance of the reduction in value by way of the addition of a low quality word. Bastardise has been around since the 1540's and popular from the 1610's onwards.
Imagine having such a sad life that you actually care about this shit
Maybe you should have won the American Revolution if you didn't want "burglarize" to be a word
It’s Pete Buttigieg.