In yesterday’s post I commented on an awkwardly punctuated sentence in the September 12 issue of The New Yorker magazine. About an hour ago I found another astonishing sentence in the same article:

He has at times enthused about good-natured restaurants with inexact kitchen standards, like Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, on the Lower East Side.

You might be thinking that I’m bothered by the comma after Steakhouse – and you would be right. I think that comma is optional, and I prefer to omit commas unless they’re absolutely necessary.

I don’t like the bouncy feeling I get when I read a sentence with many commas. (My own rule of thumb is “No more than three commas in a sentence.” It’s a rule I frequently break, but it’s also prompted me to simplify many a tangled sentence.)

But my real problem is with “He…enthused.” If you asked me to predict something that will never, ever happen (“Donald Trump will never be elected,” “Queen Elizabeth II will never abdicate,” “the word enthuse will never find its way into The New Yorker“), I would have put all my chips on the last one.

But there it was, on page 51 of the September 12 issue.

I hate the word enthuse.  That sentence on page 51 prompted me to ask myself why I feel so strongly about it. I came up with two reasons for hating it:

1.  It doesn’t have a respectable pedigree. Language experts say that enthuse is a back formation – a made-up word derived from the legitimate word enthusiasm. To put it differently: You’re not allowed to make up new words.
2. Enthuse is a weak word. Say it aloud: You’re not going to hear any enthusiasm in those two syllables. That long u vowel doesn’t work (at least not for me).

But are those valid objections? Many words we use every day are back formations. Escalate is one: Back in the 1960s it was a suspect word. Everyone knew what an escalator was, but English teachers were horrified when people started to turn that useful noun into a verb.

Fast forward to 2016, and we all use escalate without thinking twice about it.

What about my complaint that enthuse is a weak word? Clearly that’s an opinion that probably wouldn’t count for much with many people. But I’m going to take a moment to defend my position.

I wish writers would pay more attention to the sounds of words, and I have a good example for you. Back in the 1960s, the Avon cosmetics company marketed an appealing fragrance called Occur!

I would have fired the person who came up with that name. Occur (a short word with two short vowels) does not convey excitement, or fascination, or romance. Adding the exclamation mark doesn’t help.

Back to enthuse. Here’s a question for those of you who want to sharpen your writing skills. What steps did I take to research enthuse?

1.  I used a library database to read the entry for enthuse in the Oxford English Dictionary. Turns out it was first used in 1827, and it’s appeared in a number of respectable publications over the years. That’s a reason to allow enthuse.
2. I checked the American Heritage Dictionary to see if its Usage Panel has an opinion about enthuse. They sure do: In 2009, 67% of the panel rejected enthuse. That’s a majority and an argument for prohibiting enthuse.

What’s the bottom line? I would say that enthuse is ok for ordinary conversation, but I would advise professional writers to avoid it.

I’m a member of the editorial board for Shaw: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies. Based on today’s research, I’d put a red line through enthuse if it showed up in a submission I was evaluating. More important, I’d be able to back up my decision – even if a copyeditor at The New Yorker argued differently.