atomize

[Itasan]

LDCE says:
atomize (2) especially AmE to divide something so that
it is no longer whole or united: e.g. a society that
has become atomized
I wonder what is the British equivalent.
Thank you.

[Amy_H]

Hi Itasan

Although I'm American, I wouldn't use 'atomize' this way ("atomized society"). I associate this word with a spray or with atoms.

Greetings from Germany,
Amy

[tigertiger]

LDCE says:
atomize (2) especially AmE to divide something so that
it is no longer whole or united: e.g. a society that
has become atomized
I wonder what is the British equivalent.
Thank you.

I am a Brit
I definatley would not use atomised for this.

I might use 'fragmented society'/'a society that had become fragmented'

[Amy_H]

I might use 'fragmented society'/'a society that had become fragmented'

This would be a more typical choice of words for me, too.

Going back to Itasan's original question, I assume the only reason 'atomize' was indicated as 'AmE' in the dictionary was because of the spelling ('z' instead of 's').

Amy

[Itasan]

Spelling, yes. But LDOCE clearly indicates that meaning (2) as 'especially AmE'.

[Amy_H]

Hi Itasan

Maybe we should just chalk this one up to "the dangers of dictionaries"?

Having learned German since coming to Germany, I've run into this "danger" a number of times. After looking up a German word in the dictionary, I always try to use it as soon as possible when talking to German friends. And occasionally the feedback I get from my German buddies is: "WHERE on earth did you learn THAT word?!?"

At any rate, I find the example given (atomized society) to be "creative" at best. For me, it would not be a typical usage.

Amy

[fluffyhamster]

I agree with what the other posters have said. Just because a word is mentioned in a dictionary doesn't mean that it is particularly useful, even for e.g. writing academic papers. Besides the difference in spelling (as Amy pointed out), the only other reason I can think of for including (the given meaning for) the form is that to NOT include words where they are attested (and therefore attestable) would be to start giving an advantage, however slight, to competing publishers (I'm not however saying that the inclusion of 'atomize' amounts to beefing up the number of entries in quite the same way as listing 'latent' words, though - all Longman is showing is that a certain number of academics or writers somewhere in the US have preferred to phrase things using the item in question in a manner, "typically" for them, like the chosen example indicates...it is "merely", as Amy says, a "creative" use; often what constitutes the majority of users will not follow a usage, despite their recognizing and respecting the creativity on "display", albeit a display they might have only ever encountered in a dictionary); then, there are dictionary users who expect to find each and every word they could ever look up regardless of its merits or otherwise (for example, I have a friend who thought the COBUILD2 was inferior to COBUILD1 simply because it didn't include 'sidewalk'; me, I usually am looking for more important things e.g. how is 'ironic' dealt with? Is the user simply referred back to 'irony' e.g. 'using or expressing irony', and given no example sentences at either entry?).

My advice (thinking as a writer) would be to look up the item in a good thesaurus to see if it gets an entry (and in the Oxford Concise, 'atom' has an entry, but not 'atomise/atomize'...draw your own conclusions, and try to think of alternatives if you can - admittedly, this might be difficult when you aren't a native speaker! TT's suggested forms derived from 'fragment', to which we could perhaps add 'break up/down' and 'disintegrate' etc); where an entry and alternatives are present, consult your own or another's intuitions, and perhaps corpus frequency data (e.g. the wordlists from the BNC), to work out which term is generally going to be the most useful and widespread.

Ultimately it all comes down to the power of the imagery, the associations that the word invokes: 'fragment' etc seem to "do it more" for us than '?atomize'.

[John Hamilton]

For what it's worth I've never ever seen this word used anywhere

John

[Amy_H]

Hi John

To be honest, I really don't think I've seen or heard any form of this word other than "atomizer".

Amy

[tigertiger]

To be honest, I really don't think I've seen or heard any form of this word other than "atomizer"

Same here.