Grammar Girl here, I'm Minyon Foggerty and this week I have a quick and dirty tip about

the difference between the words critique and criticize, and a meeting middle about more

language games like Pig Latin.

And if you're a teacher I have some good news for you at the end of the podcast.

A Twitter user with the handle We Hate Nick asked, is it okay to use critique as a verb?

Do I critique a design or do I criticize it?

And that turned out to be a slightly more complicated question than I expected, because

much to my surprise, in the past it seems that a lot of people didn't think critique

should be used as a verb.

For example I found a snipe at the word in 1992 in the popular press.

A New York Times book reviewer criticized Raymond Carver, the author of a short story collection,

for lack of precision in his words because among other things he used critique as a verb.

And the new Fowler's Modern English usage, a guide to British English published in 1996,

said at the time that the verb critique was being used controversially in American English.

But the most interesting thing about that entry is that it also notes that the writer of

the 1926 edition of the book had hoped that the noun critique would die out.

Apparently he thought it was pretentious.

This word family can't get a break.

Everyone seems to be picking on it.

You can't be a verb.

We don't like your noun.

La, ba, ba.

...