While liaison is proper word, liaise is just a bureaucratic backformation. Instead of liaising with opposing counsel, why don’t you just talk with opposing counsel?
William Safire was right almost twenty years ago:
Because we knock the nonce, usage mavens look askance at back-formations like liaise: instead of discreetly developing a deliciously dangerous liaison, too many promiscutarians freely liaise with anybody they want to hop into communication with. We heap ridicule on the new word to see if it will slink away; if it sticks around and fills a linguistic need, we will eventually liaise with it.Liaise doesn’t fit any need. I hope it doesn’t catch on here in America.
3 comments:
Martin, I wonder if people are using "liase" in an attempt to use more active words - I remember being taught that you should use verbs rather than nouns - "I met with opposing counsel" as opposed to "I had a meeting with opposing counsel." If nominalizing verbs is bad, maybe some think that the corollary is true?
Craig: I suppose that might be why people use "liaise." But I still think it's much better to say something like I talked to/e-mailed/wrote/called/visited opposing counsel.
I agree that it's a poor word to use, I was just pontificating as to why someone might think it was a real word. Some people try hard to sound smarter than they are, but sound dumb.
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