English is unceasingly friendly to neologisms; we constantly invent new words and phrases to meet the needs of changing technology, culture, and so on. New technology gave us the words laser and radar, and microwave. Changes in our culture gave us words like the portmanteau words, motel and workaholic. Some neologisms are delightful additions to the language, and help give English its richness and expressiveness.
Some neologisms deserve to be throttled, wrapped up in black plastic, and dropped into the deepest crevices of the Marianas Trench as soon as they are created. Two such words are incent and incentivize.
These so-called words are common among businesspeople, many of whom have an almost obsessive compulsion to sound smart by showing off their big vocabulary. At some point in the 70s, one such businessperson was looking for an impressive-sounding way to say encourage. They looked at the word incentive and decided that its root must be incent. They were wrong. There is (or was, at any rate) no such word as incent.
(To me, incent sounds too much like incense, and thus carries the associated meaning. The first time I heard someone talk of “incenting employees” to do something or other, I couldn’t help but ask myself “Do they really want to infuriate them?” Of course, others might think of the other meaning of incense, the noun form, and that might bring to mind patchouli-soaked hippies.)
Incentivize is a victim of our tendency to think that we can stick the suffix -ize (that’s -ise for those of you in the United Kingdom) on the end of any word to create a verb. Yes, that works in many cases—authorize, legalize, and deputize, for example. But in most cases—especially when you look at some of the examples coming from business jargon—it’s ugly and unnecessary.
What is the correct word then? I’ve heard President Obama use incentivize many times and I hate it.
Sharlene,For starters, encourage, motivate, persuade, induce, entice or spur would work in many cases. Or if you want to keep the work incentive in there, just reword things to say something like "…give people incentive to…", or "…create an incentive…"
I thought Obama sounded like an idiot when he used the word "Incentivize" and all I could think is "where did he go to school??" and "this is our president??" Good Grief! It is as annoying as the word "enthused."
Oops he did it again. It sounds terrible.
I don’t think incentivize sounds stupid at all, and Obama’s use of the word reflects its wide and growing usage by people of his generation and younger. (It’s not as if he said "conversate"!)*Encourage* does not capture the same sense (one of giving someone a financial incentive to do something), and "give people an incentive to" is unwieldy.*Incent* sounds stupid, though. Only two people I know use this word, and they’re not particularly intelligent.
Ornery,One of the problems I have with "incentivize" is that it frequently mis-directs the action of the sentence, leaving the meaning unclear. For example:"…a plan to incentivize new battery technology." (Barack Obama campaign speech: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/28/campaign.wrap/) This makes it sound like "incentivizing" is something that you do to new battery technology. However, you don’t give battery technology an incentive. "But the system right now doesn’t incentivize [using a cheaper treatment]." (Obama on health care: http://www.emaxhealth.com/1/72/32389/obama-there-should-be-ways-incentivize-health-systems.html) Again, is "incentivizing" something that you do to using a cheaper treatment? Later in the same appearance, the president says that something is "going to incentivize the private sector to do even better." Here, "incentivizing" is being done to the private sector.So we have three very different things–new battery technology (a thing), using cheaper treatments (an action), and the private sector (an abstraction for part of the economy)–all being "incentivized." So what exactly does "incentivize" mean, if it can be applied equally to these three things?In all three cases, I would argue that it is less abstract and clearer to use a few more words. "…give businesses an incentive to use new battery technology…""…give doctors and insurance companies an incentive to choose a cheaper treatment…""…give businesses an incentive to do better…"
Exactly. Think of it this way – I plan to ecouragize….I’m going to motivize??!!!!!
Sharlene,Well, if you’re going to do it right, you have to start with the noun form, and then add the -ize suffix to create the new verb. Here’s the formula:Incentive (noun form) + ize = IncentiveizeTherefore, if you start with the noun forms encouragement and motivation, then add -ize, you get encouragementize and motivationize.And now if you’ll excuse me, I have some farce stuck in my eye.
It sounds as if we’re talking about two different things here.
1) Is incentivize a word with a distinct meaning? I would argue that it is. Encourage, induce, persuade all imply coercion or influence, but incentivize is the only word meaning, “to provide a reward with the specific intention of affecting behavior”. Incentivize implies influencing and puts partial responsibility for the desired action on the rewarder, not just the rewardee.
2) We seem to agree that “incentivize” needs to have a person/group stated within the sentence. “We have to incentize buying soap” would be incorrect, but “We have to incentivize customers for buying soap” would be correct, since we have a clear target for the incentivizing.
Let’s not shun new (if at least 40 years can be considered new anymore) words simply because they’re different. Let’s make reasonable rules that allow the words to fit into our established grammar.
Kevin,
I still don’t see a need for incentivize. For example, in your soap-buying example, we can simply replace incentivize with reward: “We have to reward customers for buying soap.”
Incentivizing happens prior to the action that might be rewarding.
“We want to encourage customers, with an incentive, to buy soap,” would be the redundant and wordy way to say the above statement “correctly.”
We are telling the customers, before they buy the soap, that if they buy it, they will be rewarded. We are not pre-rewarding the customers, nor are we waiting for the action to take place before offering the reward. We are incentivizing – the promise of reward, IF…
PS – spellcheck (another neologism) does not question incentivizing, yet it does question spellcheck.