Garner's Usage Tip of the Day

I subscribe to Bryan Garner's daily "Usage Tips."  This came in today's e-mail:

poetize; poeticize.

Although Eric Partridge claimed that "'poetize' is gradually displacing 'poeticize'" (Usage & Abusage at 235[Garner's Modern American Usage, Oxford University Press]), in fact "poeticize" is six times as common in print as "poetize." E.g.:

o "Surrealistic touches pile on top of surrealistic poeticizing, and the production collapses." "Mini Reviews," Wash. Post, 3 May 1996, at N42.

o "He poeticizes sculpture's historic frustration in works that leap into the viewer's heart with lapdog charm." Peter Schjeldahl, "The Credible Hulk," Village Voice, 20 May 1997, at 89.

In any event, it appears that the two have undergone differentiation. Although both originally meant "to compose poetry," only "poetize" (dating from the late 16th century) properly bears that sense today. "Poeticize" (dating from the early 19th century) means "to imbue with poetic qualities; to impart an aesthetic or emotional impact suggestive of poetry."

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Which word are you more likely to use?

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-- sdh

Comments

[Victor Montero]

Poeticize, definitely. It's the correct term. "I prefer to be poetically correct most of the time and grammatically correct all the time," as Pater put it.