whoa, stumbled upon this in my macbook thesaurus.  time to stop using ‘utilize’, ‘indicate’, ‘presently’ unless i want to sound like a pompous asshole.  who are you DFW and how did you become so wise???

utilizeThis is a puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn’t do, its extra letters and syllables don’t make a writer seem smarter. Rather, usingutilize makes you seem like either a pompous twit or someone so insecure that he’ll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look smart. The same is true for the noun utilization, for vehicle as used for car, for residence as used for home, for indicate as used for say, for presently, at present, at this time,and at the present time as used for now, and so on. What’s worth remembering about puff-words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads: “Formal writing” does not mean gratuitously fancy writing; it means clean, clear, maximally considerate writing.— DFW