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#19560 02/20/01 12:12 PM
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stranger
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However, when one considers the past tense, one might purchase a "used" car, not a "utilized" car. To avoid the connotation of something "used up" most sellers now substitute the term "previously owned or driven"


#19561 02/20/01 12:20 PM
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stranger
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Perhaps the usage of commencement is to refer to the beginning of a new stage of ones life after the years spent learning and then forgetting much of what was taught for all those years after kindergarten. That reminds me of a poem or song i once learned:
Plato, Euripides, Socrates, Diogenes,
Were known for their Philosophy.
The more you study, the more you know,
The more you know, the more you forget,
The more you forget, the less you know,
So, why study?


#19562 02/20/01 01:17 PM
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>one might purchase a "used" car, not a "utilized" car

The other word we use is second-hand as in "would you buy a second-hand car from that man?!" I only thought about the strangeness of the word when a friend said that she wouldn't buy a "second hand house", a term I have never heard used (except, maybe, in the context of a brand new house which has been sold very soon after it is built). We don't say a "used" house either, maybe because houses don't get "used up".


#19563 02/20/01 09:29 PM
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To avoid the connotation of something "used up" most sellers now substitute the term "previously owned or driven"

...or pre-loved.


#19564 02/20/01 10:29 PM
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wow Offline
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one might purchase a "used" car, not a "utilized" car

Perhaps because some motorists have not mastered driving skills as effectively as others?
wow


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