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Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Again, it's entirely proper....informally. The OED will tell you that specifically. The use of "investment" that you champion is a legitimate use of the word, but it is a poor choice if you were writing an essay, thesis, or business article in a prestigious magazine or journal.
What we are specifically debating here is the substitution of invest with buy. There are a few other uses of the word invest, but here it is informal and should be avoided in formal writing. Don't write invest when you really mean buy. The reader might take this as the writer being pretentious, which is to be avoided. In your case, you can virtually discard the word buy, as it can be argued that we buy things for an intended benefit pretty much every time we spend money. We wouldn't buy anything otherwise. (Of course, there are exceptions, depending on your spending habits.) This is why I consider this use of invest to be informal. The problem with informal word usage is that it can confuse or otherwise sit awkwardly with the reader. Informal language degrades what would otherwise be good, solid writing.
I have a saying when it comes to word usage: "Why utilize utilize when using use will do?"
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I'd even take it to mean that people forget that they are BUYING something, and thus when they don't get the intended investment benefit, they investment was wasted, and it is returns to just a purchase.
In simplest terms the idea of investment has become an marketing tool word to the tune of the mass market media control thread.
In continuing the analogy if the person invests in a treadmill to lose weight, when they do not lose the weight, the investment return is zero. So it was a bad investment.
Further, there are times where I've stopped listening when people use the investment track to convince themselves that the purchase they will make is actually something that they need more than they want. Using the word invest makes them feel like they are getting an additional benefit, when in reality, they are not.
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