Drought, Draft, and Drouth

       A good example of the evolution of language is the way the word "Draft" and its related words have changed in usage.  Drought is the older spelling of draft.  Older writing will refer to taking a drought of water, or feeling a drought of air.  Older writing will refer to a period without rain as a drouth.  One seldom sees a mention of drouth after the 1940s, when it was replaced by drought.  At the same time, people started talking about feeling a draft, and bars began serving draft beer.

Utilize, Facilitate and Idolize

      The neologisms where nouns are transformed into verbs are usually to be avoided, especially if there are alternative words that work.  Utilize is probably the most egregious of these.  I suspect that utilize arose out of a love affair with John Stuart Mill.  "Use" is an alternative that is not only shorter, but has no savor of pretentious jargon to it.  Facilitate is another turkey of a word.  Enable or sponsor are far better words, and once again, using them doesn't make it sound like you are making things more complicated than they have to be.
       Idolize is much the same as utilize or facilitate, with the exception that there aren't many words with the same shade of meaning.  The most similar word Estase can think of is venerate, but venerate has no ironic shade of meaning.  When one says venerate, that implies genuine religious devotion.  After all, one might say he or she idolizes Mick Jagger.  One would never say they venerate Mick Jagger.