# operationalise/operationalize



## carpve

Hiya, 
wondering why this word is not accepted, if the operationalization of something can not someone says "to operationalise something"?
Cheers


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## Luchie

It is just not a word, full stop. sorry


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## panjandrum

carpve said:


> Hiya,
> wondering why this word is not accepted, if the operationalization of something can not someone says "to operationalise something"?
> Cheers


Where was it not accepted?
I may not like the word, but it's been used in academic writing for the last fifty years or so.


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## cuchuflete

Luchie said:


> It is just not a word, full stop. sorry



If it's used—and it is—and if it has made its way into dictionaries—and it has—then I would suggest that it is a word.




> Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English   *Main Entry:*  operationalize1*Part of Speech:* _v_*Definition:*  to define a concept or variable so that it can be measured or  expressed quantitatively
> 
> *Main Entry:*  operationalize2*Part of Speech:* _v_*Definition:*  to put into operation, start working





> Main Entry:    *operationalize *
> *operationalize* can be found at Merriam-WebsterUnabridged dott com


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## winklepicker

I hate this kind of verbal elephantiasis. Is it sufficiently distinct from _operate_ to justify its existence? Why not _put into operation_?

Oh... hang on... I get it! That doesn't sound *important* enough. Forget I spoke...


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## cuchuflete

Greetings Mr Wiklepicker,
If you scrounge around this forum, you will find many intemperate diatribes by me on the topic of overstuffed, pompous business, academic, journalistic, and especially governmental jargon.  That said, the question here is not whether we like the term, but whether it is a word, and a usable word.  

I believe it is a word, and may be used.  I don't like it, and could probably find better alternatives for most contexts.  "Put into operation", as you suggest, is one such alternative. There are others, equally clean and clear, and similarly lacking in bloat and self-importance.  

_N.B._ "Elephantiasis" is probably offensive to the PC crew, as it says precisely what it means, without regard for the feelings of elephants.


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## nyd

Operationalization does not mean "put into operation". It means clearly, completely and unambigously defining a term in its context. The defined term might have other definitions in dictionaries or other contexts. Operationali(z|s)ation is an academic jargon and should not be used in any other context.


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## Linkway

nyd said:


> Operationali(z|s)ation is an academic jargon and should not be used in any other context.



Any particular reason?

There are many different academic fields.  Which one/s  should it be restricted to?

And why can't it be used even in business management and non-academic discussion of corporate strategy?


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## natkretep

It does mean 'put into operation'! The other definition is particular to philosophy. Here's Oxford Dictionaries:


> *operationalize
> *Pronunciation: /ɒpəˈreɪʃ(ə)n(ə)lʌɪz
> (also *operationalise*)
> *VERB [WITH OBJECT]*
> 1 Put into operation or use: _such measures would be difficult to operationalize_
> 2 _Philosophy _Express or define (something) in terms of the operations used to determine or prove it: _previous studies have operationalized panic in terms of average time of group escape_


I think the word has gone well beyond academic discourse and I hear it not infrequently.


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## nyd

Linkway said:


> Any particular reason?
> 
> There are many different academic fields.  Which one/s  should it be restricted to?


Any, because operationalisation is needed for any research question.


Linkway said:


> And why can't it be used even in business management and non-academic discussion of corporate strategy?


As long as it means to define a latent variable, then I suppose it is ok, but such use is not usually needed in business management or corporate strategy.

The online version of Oxford dictionary is the only one that gives a definition outside academic field. Using operationalization as "put into operation" is like saying that terrorist are latent variables, because latent means hidden. While terrorists are indeed hidden and in some contexts they may be variables into a model, they are definetely not latent variables, because this term is a jargon with only one meaning. Ofcourse, anyone can use any word as he wishes, but if someone tries to use an already existing word with a completely different meaning it might not be understood.
If someone would tell anyone in the academic field, that _these measures are difficult to operationalize_, that person would understand that the measures are difficult to be linked to other quantifiable measures and since this doesn't make much sense, she/he would rather understand that the results of the measures are hard to measure because a proper definition of the success of the measures cannot be found.


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## natkretep

I have seen _operationalisation _in the first sense in scholarly writing on applied linguistics. Examples:

If student teachers are to learn to apply their linguistic knowledge sensitively, they need highly contextualised learning, in which they develop not only pedagogical and content knowledge that is informed by applied linguistics, but learn to *operationalise *this knowledge appropriately and effectively to teach English language learners. (Sue Ellis and Elspeth McCartney (eds), A_pplied Linguistics and Primary School Teaching _[Cambridge University Press, 2011], p. 18)

construct: a theory of linguistic knowledge or ability that may be *operationalised *in a language test. (Alan Davies, _An Introduction to Applied Linguistics: From Practice to Theory_, 2nd edn [Edinburgh University Press, 2007], p. 161)


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## Keith Bradford

I'd never seen this word until today. But I conclude that if nine highly intelligent members of this forum have spent seven years trying (and failing) to agree on its existence, let alone its meaning or usefulness, then I can safely ignore it for the rest of my life.

Ahhh, another problem solved!


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## natkretep

Keith, I can't quite ignore it if I attend lectures and read books on applied linguistics and the word is used!

Also, here's the OED for that meaning of the word, with quotations.


> *2. trans. To put into effect, to realize.*
> 1981   R. G. Myers _Connecting Worlds_ 24   The head of the new..Centre for Curriculum Development, Training, and Research in Chile called upon the services of a former professor..to help operationalize and evaluate a new curriculum.
> 1988   _Pacific Rev_. 1 389   Mutual defence and mutual security were the reasons for the Philippines agreeing... However, the MBA makes no reference to how these mutualities would be operationalised.
> 1994   _Canad. Def_. Q. Mar. 12/2   A number of Asian governments already had developed variants of ‘Comprehensive Security’ as a way to conceptualize, articulate, and operationalize their specific national and regional security and defence needs.


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## Knecht

Hello, could smb. tell what is the meaning of this:
"Some interventions (e.g., behavioral, cognitive-behavioral) suit themselves to *manualized* treatments, while others are much more fluid and harder to *operationalize*".
I cannot find anywhere the meaning of manualize & operationalize. Thanks in advance..


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## bennymix

"Operationalize" was discussed in previous posts, and it's very much a word, contrary to Luchie and winklepicker and Keith.   Nat's posts, above, have examples.  See also nyd's posts.

"Manualize" is a rather odd, coined word, maybe, as winkle suggested, showing 'elephantiasis.'   I think it means treatment whose procedures may be described in a manual, e.g. "Manual for cognitive behavioral therapy."


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## Andygc

Knecht, we really need to know where your sentence comes from. Although bennymix's guess at the meaning might be correct, it's such a strange usage that it would help to know who wrote it and in what. A bit of context, such as the preceding two or three sentences could also be helpful.

By the way, there is no word "smb." in English.


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## bennymix

Here is the source for the quotation in post #14--posted on behalf of Knecht.Judging by the context, perhaps 'manualize' is not very different from 'operationalize';  it means specify how something is done, how some general goal--better self regard--is to be achieved, with specific detail.
The word does occur on the 'net, e.g.  


> And we find that we've been able to manualize many of  them [concepts], and we actually carry out random assignment efficacy and  effectiveness studies.
> 
> Martin Seligman on positive psychology


Source for the quotation in post#14:_
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation_ by Braddom.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=dxd4Kcy1StYC&pg=PT390


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## Andygc

The link is unreliable, benny, because there's access limits. However, I found it by changing the ".ca" in the link to ".com". I have found "manualize" in several online dictionaries, but not the OED, and they consistently take it to mean "to make manual" (with "to use the hands" as an obsolete meaning). However, they all seem to rely on the same example, so plagiarism seems the likely cause of the agreement. 





> *1998*, Paul Dowling, _The sociology of mathematics education: mathematical myths, pedagogic texts_
> There is no mystery, nothing intellectual. Even the calculator, in a sense, *manualizes* the intellectual and wristwatches are manual things.


That doesn't help with the quotation asked about here. I think you are probably correct that the author is coining a new verb "to describe in a manual". Pretty horrible.


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## bennymix

The full sentence by Braddom, in the book I've cited, is this:



> With regards to measuring the intervention, some interventions (e.g., behavioral… treatments)  suit themselves to manualized treatments, while others (e.g., existential) are much more fluid and hard to operationalize.


 P. 390.


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## bennymix

This example makes clear the meaning in the present context:

_Am J Occup Ther_. 2011 Nov-Dec; 65(6): 711–719. 

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3254151/
*Manualization of Occupational Therapy Interventions: Illustrations from the Pressure Ulcer Prevention Research Program*
  [authors]
*Abstract*


> The manualization of a complex occupational therapy intervention is a crucial step in ensuring treatment fidelity for both clinical application and research purposes. Towards this latter end, intervention manuals are essential for assuring trustworthiness and replicability of randomized controlled trials (RCT’s) that aim to provide evidence of the effectiveness of occupational therapy.


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## Andygc

Thank you, benny. It looks as though the verb "to manualize" has become established as part of the jargon of rehabilitation therapies - "to put in a book". I wonder what was wrong with "to document"? "The documentation of a complex occupational therapy intervention is a crucial step ..."


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## Keith Bradford

Andy, you forget the hypnotic force of the letter 'z'.  There seems to be a behavioural rule that writers on unpopular or newly-recognised topics (the military, the social sciences and management come to mind) are suckers for any long word ending in -ize.  I'm sure that the -ise alternative wouldn't be nearly as seductive to them.  And if they used simple words, how could they bamboozle us so?

See Shyster and Conman's monograph, _"Unwarranted extendabilization of vocabularized neologisms in academicized documentalizification"_, University of California, 2011.


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## Andygc

KB, at least they didn't documentize the therapy.


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## bennymix

Hi Keith,
Yes, "ize" jargon can become unbearable.
However, the original [in OP] term "operationalize" has a long, respected tradition in Philosophy of Science and the sciences, and no, it can't be replaced by 'put into operation.'
I challenge you to provide an alternative!  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationalization

*Operationalization*

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



> In research design, especially in psychology, social sciences, life sciences, and physics operationalization is a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon that is not directly measurable, though its existence is indicated by other phenomena. It is the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make the theoretical concept clearly distinguishable or measurable,[...]
> 
> The concept of operationalization was first presented by the British physicist N. R. Campbell in his 'Physics: The Elements' (Cambridge, 1920). This concept next spread to humanities and social sciences. It remains in use in physics.


-----------------------------------



Keith Bradford said:


> Andy, you forget the hypnotic force of the letter 'z'.  There seems to be a behavioural rule that writers on unpopular or newly-recognised topics (the military, the social sciences and management come to mind) are suckers for any long word ending in -ize.  I'm sure that the -ise alternative wouldn't be nearly as seductive to them.  And if they used simple words, how could they bamboozle us so?
> 
> See Shyster and Conman's monograph, _"Unwarranted extendabilization of vocabularized neologisms in academicized documentalizification"_, University of California, 2011.


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## Keith Bradford

Benny, I pass that one uncommented, except to say that if N.R. Campbell had been a little wittier he might have invented a better word.  We're now on _manualize _(and _burglarize _and _hospitalize _and a thousand others, if you like).


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## Knecht

Hi, again and thank you all for your useful&helpful suggestions!
Urban Dictionary has these:

*Manualize*
Making something manual
_"I manualized that hoe last night...."

* Manualization*
To officially record and implement a manual; includes. specific skills, theories of practice, preferred protocol, necessary steps etc.
In this year, we complete the manualization, test the certification process, and develop a grant application for pilot testing the model.


_


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## Andygc

Knecht, the Urban Dictionary is not a dictionary (but see post #18). It's whatever people feel like posting, and much of it is nonsense. How can you make a hoe manual? It's a hand-held gardening and agricultural tool. Unless it's a mechanical hoe attached to a tractor, but then it cannot be operated manually.


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## Linkway

_"I manualized that hoe last night...."

_What is the context of that sentence?  Who said it, where, and to whom?

Although a "hoe" is a garden implement, in some forms of U.S. slang it is used as a derogatory term for a human being, usually female, and I think the sentence given may have sexual, violent or other non-gardening intentions.


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## JulianStuart

Keith Bradford said:


> Benny, I pass that one uncommented, except to say that if N.R. Campbell had been a little wittier he might have invented a better word.  We're now on _manualize _(and _burglarize _and _hospitalize _and a thousand others, if you like).


Oh, Keith!  The English word burgle is as fictionalized as burglarize: it is a back-formation from burglar.  Creationalized less than 150 years ago, around the same year as the suffixation of burglarize.  My recent transient peeve was "monetize"* but it is here to stay, with rapid growth since the 50s and currently more common in BrE than AmE (according to the nNgram viewer).

*I only came across it recently in the context of popular websites that don't sell anything - the popularity is often monetized by advertising.


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## sdgraham

Knecht said:


> Hi, again and thank you all for your useful&helpful suggestions!
> Urban Dictionary has these:



One useful suggestion we offer is to treat advice from the Urban Dictionary as you would an e-mail from Nigeria telling you that you're he lucky winner of a huge amount of money - just send your personal details and bank information.

That aside, one note that should be made is that just because a word appears in some dictionary somewhere (and some dictionaries are more apt than others to list otherwise non-words) or in jargon in a specialized field, that doesn't mean that such words are appropriate for use in general communication in the English language.

Before I retired from America's largest news-gathering organization, I was responsible for hiring (and firing) editors. Anyone wont to use a raft of dodgy "-ized" words never got through the door or, if they did, they were quickly redundantized.


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## JulianStuart

sdgraham said:


> O
> Before I retired from America's largest news-gathering organization, I was responsible for hiring (and firing) editors. Anyone wont to use a raft of dodgy "-ized" words never got through the door or, if they did, they were quickly redundantized.


  Or they were turned into a downs.  You know, downsized


This Cambridge Grammar (by Rodney Huddleston - 1984 - ‎Language Arts & Disciplines) covers "class-changing* affixation" with the comment "Much the most productive is -ise (-ize), which forms denominal verbs like hospitalise or de-adjectival verbs like popularise. Others are -ify (beautify, simplify**) and ...".  I just _real_ized that this "affixation phobia" _material_izes each generation.  We accept the affixed forms if we grew up with them, but frequently reject them (often out of hand) if they are new to us.  While I agree that a new --ize form is out of place if it is used to replace a perfectly good word by a writer for no good reason (or for the bad reason of wanting to "sound" good), the creation process is an integral part of the language.


*Changing e.g., from noun to verb a.k.a. verbification
** And, of course, verbify


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## bennymix

In line with what Julian has said about 'class changing,' I started a thread on Shakespeare's 'eternize' [also used by others].

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2845938

I wonder if the the 'bar the door' persons such as Keith and SD have a problem with that word?

My favorite bugbear in the 'ize' department is 'finalize,' but I fear the battle is lost.


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## JulianStuart

We all have our bugbears, just at different times

I lumped -ise and -ize together and searched all "English" - you can have fun seeing whether words arose first in AmE or BrE by altering the database or plotting -ize (both in AmE and BrE) and -ise (only in BrE etc) separately
From oldest to newest 
realize, materialize,categorize,finalize/hospitalize, operationalize, prioritize
Link to Ngram viewer with search string :
prioritize+prioritise,finalise+finalize,(realise+realize)*0.05,materialize+materialise,categorize+categorise,hospitalize+hospitalise,operationalize+operationalise


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## bennymix

Thanks, Julian.    There is one respect in which the n-gram is misleading.  "Operationalize" or "Operationalization" have been in science and philosophy of sceince for almost 100 years.   I believe what the graph shows is a 'leaking' of the term into ordinary or perhaps  business discourse.


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## JulianStuart

bennymix said:


> Thanks, Julian.    There is one respect in which the n-gram is misleading.  "Operationalize" or "Operationalization" have been in science and philosophy of sceince for almost 100 years.   I believe what the graph shows is a 'leaking' of the term into ordinary or perhaps  business discourse.


  Feel free to explore any specific you wish  If nothing else, I learnt a valuable lesson in search string syntax to create that plot.  Of course, one could change the form from (*-ise + *-ize) to (*-isation +* -ization) and replot.  Hospitalization is the big winner after you do that
Operationalization doesn't really take off till the 50s, but any sphere where it has been in use longer may well be under-represented in the database.  It's somewhat of a blunt tool when it comes obscure fields.


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## bennymix

I am thinking of the work of the celebrated physicist PW Bridgeman.   His book, "The Logic of Modern Physics" (1927) propounded what he called '_operationalism_,' and stressed that concepts such as length had to be cashed out in term of the _operations_ that measure them.

'Operationalize' and 'operationalization' are next door concepts to those above, and blur into them.   See for example.

*Operational definition* - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_definition



> An operational definition is a result of the process of operationalization and is used ... that the modern concept owes its origin in part to Percy Williams Bridgman, .



Bridgman's influence was strong in psychology, e.g. in the works of Tolman and Stevens in the 1930's

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/199/1/operat.htm

*Of Immortal Mythological Beasts:  Operationism in Psychology*
Christopher D. Green 

Stevens' work was not just a psychological rewrite of The Logic of Modern Physics. In addition to outlining the general position and dealing with recent criticism of the method and its applications to psychology, he offered the interesting proposal that the fundamental operation is discrimi- [p. 302] nation. [...]. Bridgman had not established any kind of hierarchy of operations; all were considered relatively equal. Stevens argued, however, that operations stood in hierarchical relation to each other, and where disagreement occurred a more fundamental or basic operation was to be appealed to.


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## velisarius

On a whim I clicked on 1800-1966 for "categorise" at the bottom of the n-gram graph in post #33.
The first page that came up was this;

https://www.google.com/search?q="ca...cd_min:1800,cd_max:1966&lr=lang_en&gws_rd=ssl

where, for ten results on that page, five of them contained not "categorise" but "categoriae" or "categorico". Forgive me if I take the ngram results with a handful of salt.


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## Keith Bradford

bennymix said:


> ...I wonder if the the 'bar the door' persons such as Keith and SD have a problem with that word?...



Two responses:

1.  No point in aguing with a word that's existed in the language for 400 years.  The Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest will have done the work for us.
2.  For more modern coinages, we have to be our own natural selection (as every speaker and writer of English is, every day - we have no _Académie_).  Is this word useful, we ask?  Is it necessary?  To take the example of "_burglarize_": yes it's useful in that it describes an (alas) everyday occurrence; no it's not necessary because time has already given us "burgle" which is both precise and short.  If we don't reject "burglarize" today, we can be fairly sure that natural selection will do it for us in the next 50 years.  This is the historic progress of language: words that are too long and unwieldy will be abridged or simply die.

Strangely enough, it's the professions that we rely on to be brutal (the military) or logical (the law) that seem to most encourage these weedy growths.  Professional self-aggrandisement, I call it.


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## Myridon

Keith Bradford said:


> time has already given us "burgle" which is both precise and short


Etymonline claims that "burglarize" is four years older than "burgle."  Burgle sounds comical.  "Gurgle" is the only similar common word and it's (more or less) an onomatopoeia.
Rather than go forward on this questionable path, let's back "burglar" up to the 1540's "burgator" so we can burgate rather than burgle or burglarize.


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## JulianStuart

velisarius said:


> . Forgive me if I take the ngram results with a handful of salt.


  Ngram is a tool and has obvious limitations and needs a considered interpretation - some salt is needed (i.e, dismissing all Ngram results because the tool is not 100% perfect has baby/bathwater similarities.*).  Here is what you get if you just search for categorise.  The graph shows that it doesn't really get used as a word _with any significant frequency_ until after 1940.  The results before then play little role in the conclusion that in its current use (and an example of a class-changing -ize affixation) , it is of recent coinage - ven providing a date for its increase in acceptance into _common_ use. We are not concerned with isolated instances of an obvious mis-"classification" - it is happenstance that Aristotle wrote a work entitled Categorise - and, in any case, when the frequency is 0.00000007% we place little weight on it. I also take such statistically insignificant results with a ton of salt.   If the intent of the plot were to do what dictionaries do (find the earliest citation of the word's use  - one instance being sufficient) then its utility is only in finding instances to examine and evaluate for meaning and priority. However, the value of the tool is that it measures _frequency over time_ in a very large database - something dictionaries don't do, or at best anecdotally.

*Here is a post in EHL I made addressing "quantitative interpretation" using some of the more advanced Viewer tools.  There are also some residual OCR errors from the scanning process, improved in the 2012 database.



velisarius said:


> On a whim I clicked on 1800-1966 for "categorise" at the bottom of the n-gram graph in post #33.
> The first page that came up was this;
> 
> https://www.google.com/search?q="ca...cd_min:1800,cd_max:1966&lr=lang_en&gws_rd=ssl
> 
> where, for ten results on that page, five of them contained not  "categorise" but "categoriae" or "categorico".


 _Mea culpa._ Edit: the light grey is the original  - I misread the intent of velisarius's post - the search correctly found the character string categorise, but it is clear that many of them were character recognition errors (mostly based on æ being read as se) for the text in the original books.  The importance (or otherwise) of their entry is discussed above and in later posts. That is indeed bizarre. However, when _I_ click on the link in _your_ post I found the following 9 lines (and one with no text just the book title) where all the versions were categorise - a bunch of them to Aristotle's work.:
(Sorry for the big quote but it was the only way to show you the citations on the page I got when clicking the link - I had to remove the actual links to get under the 10K forum limit).  This is obviously different from what you saw, so perhaps a tad more salt is needed for your version



> 149 between Aristotle's point of view in the _Categorise_, in the Physica, and in the Metaphysica. In the Categories, Aristotle dwells mainly on sensible substances (such as the vulgar understand) and the modes of naming and describing them.
> ​
> Aristotle, in the _Categorise_,  (Dexippus says), accommodates himself both to the received manner of  speaking and to the simple or ordinary conception of ovala entertained  by youth or unphilosophical men...
> ​
> But  since by the Law of Unity all phenomena are proportionally related, and  that nature in its evolution shows a peculiar serial progression, there  must be, if we could only _categorise_, them, the same order and serial relation in diseased states.
> ​
> 30,31). After his return from Persia Simplicius wrote commentaries upon Aristotle's De Cselo, Physica, De Anima, and _Categorise_,, which, with a commentary upon the Enchiridion of Epictetus, have survived. In his writings Simplicius, who had ...
> ​
> ...  Venice, 1526, Berlin (by H. Diels), vol. i. 1882 ; on the De Anima (a  disappointing work), Venice, 1527, Berlin (by M. Hayduck), 1882 ; on the _Categorise_,, Venice, 1499, Basel, 1551 ; on the Enchiridion, Venice, 1528, Paris (Didot), 1842, &c.
> ​
> 1882 ; on the De Anima (a disappointing work), Venice, 1527, Berlin (by M. Hayduck), 1882 ; on the _Categorise_,,  Venice, 1499, Basel, 1651 ; on the Enchiridion, Venice, 1528, Paris  (Didot), 1842, &c. On the lifo and writings of Simplicius, see ...
> ​
> I do not think that is a fair way to put the question in any case, but I cannot do it because, as I said, it is impossible to _categorise_,. This is the most individual thing in all medicine, and any attempt to put labels and categories to it makes it quite ...
> ​
> The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animalsbooks.google.com/books?id=oNdRAAAAcAAJ
> Charles Darwin - 1872 - ‎Read - ‎More editions
> ​
> BOETHII, De syllogismo _categorise_,  libri duo, acc. J. P. MIGNE (Patrologiae cursus completus. Series  Latina, 64). Parisiis 1891. 26. —, De syllogiemo hypothetico libri duo,  ibid. 27. —, In librim Ariatotelia de Interpretatione Commenmria. . .,  ibid.
> ​
> It is difficult, naturally, to _categorise_,  exactly ; but we may with fair authority mass together here a number of  dramas which in general aim recall Dryden rather than Shakespeare or  Racine. They may still be styled heroic even though there is ...​


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## Andygc

Keith Bradford said:


> Strangely enough, it's the professions that we rely on to be brutal (the military) or logical (the law) that seem to most encourage these weedy growths.


Evidence, please.

JulianStuart. Re your list of early examples of categorise. It doesn't take much effort to follow the links to the books to discover the transcription errors in some of them - and no 9 is Latin, not English.


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## JulianStuart

Andygc said:


> JulianStuart. Re your list of early examples of categorise. It doesn't take much effort to follow the links to the books to discover the transcription errors in some of them - and no 9 is Latin, not English.



Edit - I've left the original post light grey but see my edit in post #40 for the D'oh moment on my part

Ya think?
(By the way those are not "my examples" nor did I cite them in any way to support the original conclusion. It was to show that I saw a different page than velisarius.  I see Aristotle's work ()whether categoriae or categorise is irrelevant  - I already acknowledged it as a "mis-classification" - found the character string but not with the right meaning or resulting from OCR error) and no transcription errors in the "real" instances of the word categorise)
As noted, the results from a period where the frequency is less than 0.0000000009% (or whatever)  are totally irrelevant to the conclusion.  The conclusion is that the acceptance of categorize/categorise as a "common" word began around 1940.


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## Andygc

I didn't say it was your examples, I said it was your list. You appeared to claim that the list was of valid examples of 'categorise'. I think my point is that Aristotle did not write a work called The Categorise, it was The Categories. The word in the Boethii text is 'categorico', not 'categorise'. I get other books in my first page on the link which have 'categorise' when the original shows 'categories' - eg Area wage survey: Denver-Boulder, Colorado, metropolitan area United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics - 1965. Goodness knows how the Darwin text crept in, the text is a complete shambles.

I don't have any problem understanding graphs. The problem with the Google ngram is that the underlying data is unreliable. The graphs only become useful if there is enough valid data to swamp the background noise of the corrupt data.


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## JulianStuart

Andygc said:


> I didn't say it was your examples, I said it was your list. You appeared to claim that the list was of valid examples of 'categorise'. I think my point is that Aristotle did not write a work called The Categorise, it was The Categories. The word in the Boethii text is 'categorico', not 'categorise'. I get other books in my first page on the link which have 'categorise' when the original shows 'categories' - eg Area wage survey: Denver-Boulder, Colorado, metropolitan area United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics - 1965. Goodness knows how the Darwin text crept in, the text is a complete shambles.
> 
> I don't have any problem understanding graphs. The problem with the Google ngram is that the underlying data is unreliable. The graphs only become useful if there is enough valid data to swamp the background noise of the corrupt data.



Edit - I've removed the gratuitous comment on graph comprehension and greyed out some of this post too.  

OK I edited my post above while you were posting.  I only showed the citations to illustrate for velisarius that what she saw was not what I saw when clicking on her link.  The citations are all from a period where baseline noise swamps any signal and it is therefore irrelevant - indeed they are the noise in many cases, and I certainly made no claim that they are relevant.  Obviously there are misclassifications (things that  do not use the word categorise as we are discussing or are database errors)  and OCR errors , especially in earlier works (where the text is not as easy to scan*) and in works that are from the early days of OCR.  I was not putting ANY weight on those, nor making any claim as a contribution to the conclusion.

So where do you think the data emerge from the noise of the baseline?  Perhaps around 1940?  That was the only intended conclusion to be drawn from the plot.  Poking around in the noise in the baseline of any method - therein lies madness  Assuming any method is 100.00000% accurate - therein also lies madness  Learning how to live with a tool that has manageable errors - priceless 

*The original comparisons of the various words in post #33 were to show where they took off from the baseline noise and could be classified, on the basis of sufficient statistics, as "common".  I didn't even look at the baseline (noise) before then.

*
*From the NGram viewer website:





> When we generated the original Ngram Viewer corpora in 2009, our OCR wasn't as good as it is today.  This was especially obvious in pre-19th century English, where the elongated medial-s (ſ) was often interpreted as an _f_, so _best_ was often read as _beft_.  Here's evidence of the improvements we've made since then, using the corpus operator to compare the 2009 and 2012 versions:


 They don't specify the diphthong æ as a tough item to OCR but you get the point


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## bennymix

From today's paper, a professor is talking about the material success of China using a high degree of authority and forbidding dissent:   He said the Chinese model will "de-incentivize" democratic movements elsewhere in the Third World.

"Ize" coinages as in the OP are continually happening;  I haven't searched the OED, but I'd say 'operationalize' was created as early as the 1930s, if not before.  The key term "_operational definition_ [of a concept]" was coined by Bridgman in 1927, say Wiki.


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## Andygc

OED Third edition June 2004

1.  trans. Philos. To express or determine in operational terms. - 1952
2. trans. To put into effect, to realize. - 1981

If somebody has earlier citations, I'm sure the editor would be glad to have them.


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## bennymix

I think the problem, in psychology, is that Tolman seems generally to say, he was giving 'operational definitions' of concepts.   There are any number of secondary sources which say he 'operationalized' the concepts.   (Google for Tolman and 'operationalization').

The same seems to apply to Bridgman in physics.   His _operational analyses_ date to the 1920s.   Here is a passage showing how one term leads into, is elided into another--i.e. 'operationalization-- in a secondary historical text.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/199/1/operat.htm

*Of Immortal Mythological Beasts: Operationism in Psychology*
Christopher D. Green

(1992). Theory & Psychology, 2, 291-320.



> *
> 1.2 Percy Bridgman and Operational Attitude*
> 
> In 1927 Percy Bridgman, an eminent high-pressure physicist who would win the Nobel prize in 1946, published The Logic of Modern Physics. In it he proposed operational analysis as a check against the kinds of mistakes which, it seemed, had led to the collapse of Newtonian physics.[...] Bridgman, in his effort to rid science of such 'errors', insisted that operational analyses are necessary for all basic theoretical concepts. He, further, went on to outline operationalizations of space, time, cause, identity, velocity, force, mass, energy, as well as of concepts from thermodynamics, electricity, relativity and quantum theory. Concepts which were not amenable to operationalization he declared to be nonsense.


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