Unnecessary Words

I just drafted a short research paper.  It went pretty quickly, about 2000 words in maybe 4 hours of actual work.  I’m not sure exactly how long it took as I was stuck on a slow train and kept getting distracted by birds and scenery along the wayside.  While working on the paper, I noticed a few words and phrases that I kept having to stop myself from using.  One of the major culprits was “utilize,” a word that is often used to add syllables to a sentence (because we all know that more syllables = smarter person) without a shred of care as to its actual meaning, which is something closer to “repurpose” than it is to “use,” at least according to the OED.  For example, “The cat utilized my denim-covered leg as a scratching post.”  (Of course, now when people want to say “repurpose,” they use the word “upcycle.”)  Many others have written about the increasing habit of writing "utilize" when "use" would work better.  I think that "utilize" may be a pet peeve of many fellow anti-jargonites because its misuse illustrates why we all hate jargon so much.  Much of the time, the person writing "utilize" isn't using it to convey the subtler shade of meaning between "use" and "repurpose" -- they just wanted to replace a simple word with a longer and more complex word that sounds "smarter" or "more technical."  This type of diction propagates the illusion that language that appears more complicated on the surface actually conveys deeper or more important thoughts.  And, it creates subtle shifts in the colloquial meaning of words, to the point where original meanings are lost on the majority of people.  I am well aware of the arguments that English is a living language, and daily usage is continually shifting the meaning of words, bringing new words into the vocabulary, and letting archaic words become extinct, and blah blah.  I'm OK with that in general principle, I just don't like change when it's driven by ignorance.