Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 00:13:49 -0800

From: Anton Sherwood dasher[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NETCOM.COM

Subject: verb-avoidance



This is a vaguely historical query--when did people starting saying

and (especially) writing "make use of" instead of "use"? If anyone

has any ideas about why this happened, that would be great, but I'm

mostly just wondering about when.



Perhaps it came in the same invasion as a lot of other verb-avoidance

devices in legalese -- "file an application" for "apply", bla bla bla.



About twenty years ago I read a lament that verbs were similarly

disappearing in French, being replaced by `faire' constructions.



Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]netcom.com