Mind your language
MR TIM LANGHORN of Leatherhead is annoyed by the Times not being able to spell any more. His particular gripe is verbs ending in -ize, which it now happi- ly spells with -ise, as generalise in a recent leader. 'The growth of the use of -ise is surely not founded on illiteracy compounded by habit,' Mr Langhorn remarks. But I think it is.
Stodgy old Fowler says proudly: 'Most printers follow the French practice of changing -ize to -ise. But the Oxford University Press, the Cambridge Uni- versity Press, the Times, and American usage, in all of which -ize is the accepted form, carry authority enough to out- weigh superior numbers.' No longer. The justification for -ize is that it derives from the Greek infinitive suffix -izein. Yet in many cases that was a long time ago, if at all, and the words have passed through Latin and French before entering English. Words 'like advertise, devise and surprise' (as Fowler says note the use of like) 'do not get their -ise even remotely from Greek', though in the 18th century surprize was a common spelling.
And among the exceptions are: advise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, demise, despise, disfranchise (or disen- franchise, as people say nowadays), enterprise, excise, improvise, incise, super- vise, surmise and televise, though, God knows, that derives from Greek. The Times can't rely on its writers and sub- editors to remember all the exceptions and so plumps for -ise. So does The Spectator, actually.
Dot Wordsworth
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