Prioritize

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Harry Lethall - 20 Nov 2006 07:32 GMT

Hello all,

PRIORITIZE
Instead of a definition, I understand the term to mean the action of
assesment of order of importance, according to certain criterion, or even
several criteria. But when I speak to people with whom I work, the term is
used to indicate that a specific task has been dropped, omitted or
forgotten: "Oh! we prioritized it."

If something is "prioritized", then should it not indicate that it has been
given a higher or lower priority? Not simply discarded?

In simple conversation, in a meeting, I mentioned that a certain project
should be prioritized, to which everyone reacted quite strongly. I didn't
state what the new priority proposal was, but everyone in the meeting
assumed I was proposing deleting a particularly important project - my
proposal would have been to increase the priority of that project.

Cambridge online dictionary defines PRIORITISE:
"verb [I or T] to decide which of a group of things are the most important
so that you can deal with them first."

Small point, I am English, but my working coleagues are all Swedish,
speaking English, in an English-speaking company. The Swedish equivalent
word is "prioriterar" (verb) - "giving priority to, ranking in order of
priority." So it is not a simple case of "assumed similar meanings because
the word exists", like when Swedes say "semester" when they really mean
"vacation".

Best regards H

(ASSUME = When you make an a.s out of U and ME)

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Peter Moylan - 20 Nov 2006 12:34 GMT

> PRIORITIZE
> Instead of a definition, I understand the term to mean the action of
> assesment of order of importance, according to certain criterion, or
> even several criteria. But when I speak to people with whom I work,
> the term is used to indicate that a specific task has been dropped,
> omitted or forgotten: "Oh! we prioritized it."

With a singular object like this, the only possible meaning I can think
of is "We gave it the highest priority."

> If something is "prioritized", then should it not indicate that it
> has been given a higher or lower priority? Not simply discarded?

The "discarded" meaning doesn't exist in any version of English I know.
The "given a lower priority" meaning is vaguely possible, although
probably not from a native speaker. If a list of things has been
prioritized, that means that the list has been sorted in some way; but
if a single item in a list is prioritized, then that means fairly
unambiguously that it has been placed at the top of the list.

> Small point, I am English, but my working coleagues are all Swedish,
> speaking English, in an English-speaking company. The Swedish
> equivalent word is "prioriterar" (verb) - "giving priority to,
> ranking in order of priority." So it is not a simple case of "assumed
> similar meanings because the word exists", like when Swedes say
> "semester" when they really mean "vacation".

Here's a guess: somebody used the word incorrectly, and the Swedes -
assuming that that someone knew English better than they did - were
fooled into adopting the new meaning.

If you look at www.onelook.com, the first definition you see includes
the note (Example: "We have too many things to do and must prioritize").
Since this implies that some things will fall off the bottom of the
list, a naive reader might assume that the word itself means "to push
things off the bottom of the list".

Signature

Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org

Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet
address could disappear at any time.

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Harry Lethall - 20 Nov 2006 14:03 GMT

> > Small point, I am English, but my working coleagues are all Swedish,
> > speaking English, in an English-speaking company. The Swedish
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> list, a naive reader might assume that the word itself means "to push
> things off the bottom of the list".

Many thanks. I am sure that it is probably something like this, or it least
it makes sence of the situation. At my place of work there is a general
tendency to keep using "profound and thought provolking" corporate jargon in
general conversation. Probably because they have heard it used by others and
just assume it to be a regular expression.

One such popular word is "synergie", but on one occasion, when I replied
using "symbiosis", it caused a lovely confusion (one is only allowed to use
commonly used obscure words!).

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Steve Hayes - 20 Nov 2006 13:18 GMT

>Hello all,
>
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>If something is "prioritized", then should it not indicate that it has been
>given a higher or lower priority? Not simply discarded?

Yes, it should.

>In simple conversation, in a meeting, I mentioned that a certain project
>should be prioritized, to which everyone reacted quite strongly. I didn't
>state what the new priority proposal was, but everyone in the meeting
>assumed I was proposing deleting a particularly important project - my
>proposal would have been to increase the priority of that project.

It's like the group at our university who declared, not tongue in cheek, that
their task was "to facilitate conflict".

What they meant was probably that it was to facilitate the resolution of
conflcit, but some how resolving or reducing conflict got dropped, and they
didn't notice that it changed the meaning.

I suspect that something similar may have happened to your collagues.

Signature

Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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Don Phillipson - 20 Nov 2006 13:20 GMT

> PRIORITIZE . . . I understand the term to mean the action of
> assesment of order of importance, according to certain criterion, or even
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> assumed I was proposing deleting a particularly important project - my
> proposal would have been to increase the priority of that project.

There are other known misunderstandings like this.
E.g. Americans use the (parliamentary) verb Table
to mean deferring or abandoning a proposal but
when Britons say a project has been Tabled they
refer to the first positive step in its implementation.

Prioritize is different, being a back-formation that
duplicates the everyday verb Rank, meaning to
sort several things by a distinct rule. It came into
current use in the USA for two reasons. American
English has always been more plastic than
British English (cf. "normalcy," a legitimate new
word in AmE since the 1920s, but in BrE an
error for "normality"). Secondly the language of
American commerce became more pretentious
and pseudo-scientific in the late 20th century as
the new discipline of "management science"
gained acceptance: so that the longer word
Prioritize came to be preferred over the simpler
verb Rank.

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Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
of American politics and business became more
quasi-scientific after 1950

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Garrett Wollman - 20 Nov 2006 17:37 GMT

>(cf. "normalcy," a legitimate new word in AmE since the 1920s, but in
>BrE an error for "normality").

The OED says 1857.

-GAWollman

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Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness

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Mark Brader - 20 Nov 2006 18:48 GMT

Don Phillipson:

> Prioritize is different, being a back-formation that
> duplicates the everyday verb Rank...

Nonsense; it means to rank things *by priority*.

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Mark Brader "Never re-invent the wheel unnecessarily;
Toronto yours may have corners."
msb@vex.net -- Henry Spencer

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Peter Duncanson - 20 Nov 2006 13:54 GMT

>Hello all,
>
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>If something is "prioritized", then should it not indicate that it has been
>given a higher or lower priority? Not simply discarded?

This seems to be an ironic use of "prioritized".

"Oh! we prioritized it" means "Oh! we assessed its priority and
treated it accordingly" (i.e. dropped it).

This may be a very local use of "prioritize". Odd usages like this
can happen when someone, perhaps in a senior position, uses a word
or phrase in a strange way, and others then copy this usage as an
in-joke.

People can be playful with language.

>Cambridge online dictionary defines PRIORITISE:
>"verb [I or T] to decide which of a group of things are the most important
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
>(ASSUME = When you make an a.s out of U and ME)

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Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

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Mark Brader - 20 Nov 2006 18:47 GMT

Harry Lethall:

>> ... when I speak to people with whom I work, the term is
>> used to indicate that a specific task has been dropped, omitted or
>> forgotten: "Oh! we prioritized it."

Peter Duncanson:

> This seems to be an ironic use of "prioritized".

Or a euphemism.

> "Oh! we prioritized it" means "Oh! we assessed its priority and
> treated it accordingly" (i.e. dropped it).

Yeah. This is not what people *I* know mean when we say "prioritize",
but I can imagine someone else saying it.

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Mark Brader "A moment's thought would have shown him,
Toronto but a moment is a long time and thought
msb@vex.net is a painful process." -- A. E. Housman

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UC - 20 Nov 2006 19:23 GMT

> Hello all,
>
[quoted text clipped - 28 lines]
>
> (ASSUME = When you make an a.s out of U and ME)

I hate this word. Junk English.

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John Dean - 21 Nov 2006 00:00 GMT

> Hello all,
>
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> If something is "prioritized", then should it not indicate that it
> has been given a higher or lower priority? Not simply discarded?

"prioritize" commonly has the meaning "to put in priority order". So if you
have half a dozen things to do, you put them in order of importance from 1
to 6. If you already know there won't be time to do everything, then placing
an item at the bottom of a priority list effectively means dropping it.
I suspect this is what your colleagues are suggesting. It could be intended
as a kind of "knock knock" routine Which would go:

You : "What happened to X?"
Them: "We prioritized it"
You: "What priority did you give it?"
Them : "The bottom one"

Signature

John Dean
Oxford

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

Prioritize