"A most fit instrument to effectuate his desire." Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia, II.127. (Though most of the citations of this quotation online drop the "most".) The Elizabethans loved playing with their words. Sidney's is the first citation in the OED.
The single pnline hit for the correct quotation is an entry at The Discouraging Word, a linguo-blog.
http://www.thediscouragingword.com/archives/arc3.shtml
Put to death without effectuating my purpose
Posted Friday, March 5, 2004
[an excerpt]
That effectuating caught in our throat, and we promptly began to gag all over the margins of the page, in the form of hastily scribbled exclamation and question marks. We found it absurd that Toth would import this pseudo-sophisticated -uated word when the short, simple effect would work just as well -- indeed, it would work much better precisely because it doesn't sound needlessly affected.
But, of course, we had to sneak a peek at the OED before we launched our planned polemic against effectuate. Perhaps not surprisingly, the word's earliest uses date to the Renaissance, which seems to suit it well: a stately, bombastic word for a stately, bombastic period. Sidney's Arcadia (1580) provides the first usage example, and the word sounds perfectly at home: "He found him a most fit instrument to effectuate his desire." And, perhaps also not unexpectedly, that dictionary maker of another orotund era -- Johnson -- uttered the word at least once within Boswell's hearing, almost 200 years after Sidney let loose with it: "I should probably be put to death without effectuating my purpose."
At the end of the entry he notes that Garner's Modern American Usage finds a subtle difference of meaning between effect and effectuate, but many stylists feel as you do.
If it's good enough for Sir Philip and Dr Johnson, it's good enough for the rest of us.
[Edited for typo and to reinstate Johnson's title]
Effectuate - just an affectation?
