e2pandas

If you're really uncertain, always use -ise. There are only about four words where -ize is obligatory, viz prize (= reward) and size, assize, and capsize. Now to business.

The -ise ending in English comes from various places. Where it's part of a Latin verb root, it has to be -ise. (Latin had no Z.) These roots are

• -cise 'cut', as in circumcise, excise, incise, etc.
• -mise 'send', as in compromise, surmise, etc.
• -prise 'take', as in enterprise, surprise, etc.
• -vise 'see', as in advise, revise, supervise, televise, improvise, etc.

In almost all these the bit before the root is a familiar Latin (or French) element like a preposition: circum- 'around', ex 'out', com-pro- 'with' + 'before', enter- 'between', sur- 'on', etc.

Then there's rise (and thus arise). The few other -ise-only words listed above (advertise, merchandise, franchise, chastise) are an odd bunch where no good reason can be given for the retention of S. (Or it's buried too deeply in Latin and/or Middle French to be worth thinking about.) These just have to be memorized. Z is occasionally used, but this is not the official spelling even in American style.

The doubt only arises with the EYES pronunciation. When it's something else (such as ISS as in practise or EEZ as in expertise), it's -ise rather than -ize. (Ignoring the fact that there's also a noun practice.)

Apart from these, the suffix is almost always from the Greek -ιζω or -izô, which was borrowed into Latin (though but rarely) as -izo (okay, Latin did have a Z when it borrowed it from Greek).

This is the living suffix, the one that can be freely attached to create new words: mesmerize, vulcanize, GUI-ize, etc. etc.

Historically, in English both -ize and -ise have been used for these. In Britain but not America, French influence (always -ise) preponderated, and most people apart from Americans use the -ise spelling in handwriting. The -ise is also used in newspapers and magazines throughout the British-language domain, if I may so call it.

In books however, it is different. British printed books from all (reputable) publishers always use -ize (in those words that allow both). This practice arose around 1900, as far as I can tell, under the auspices of Fowler and the OED. While the generic IANA tag for British English is en-GB, there is a specific one for Oxford dictionary style, en-GB-oed, which ensures that -ize is recognized as a British spelling.

This might surprise quite a few Britons who think the Z is an Americanism: no it's not. The Z is used by Oxford, Cambridge, Faber, Abacus, Picador, Penguin, Vintage, the lot. You have to go really downmarket to find S used. But although all publishing houses have adopted it, it has not passed into popular use; and the BBC and the Government still use S.

Oddly, Australian books do use S, and official government style guides in Australia stick to -ise.

The reason why analyse, catalyse, paralyse are still written with S in British books is that they are actually malformed Greek as they stand: the combination of Greek roots would give ana-lys-ize. One syllable has been dropped (haplology) and a compromise spelling adopted.

Archaic English, meaning "called" or "named".

"It is full fair to ben yclept madame" - Chaucer

"To be called 'Madam' is acceptable". Perhaps in Chaucer's day, it was. These days, "Madam" has many uses, and has fallen into disfavour. The word "yclept" (or "ycleped") has fallen so far from favour as to be used only in jocular or poetic senses. I call this a shame.

It is pronounced with a long "e", as in he. The etymology is seemingly straightforward enough, taken from the Middle English verb clepe (meaning to call), and originating with the Old English (possibly Indo-European) root of cleopian . Dear Webster mentions that the y- prefix was used to create the past participle of a verb (the equivalent of the German prefix ge- or the modern English suffix -ed). So there we have it.

The word is little-used nowadays, although Michael Quinion mentions that it still pops up from time to time in journalistic pieces, or where someone seeks to make a moderately humorous point about a name or nickname. Even though it ceased to be in common usage in England in the 13th century (dying out from North to South), it still appears in most modern dictionaries.

More modern uses include snippets such as "...the unfortunately yclept basketball player just makes matters worse: ‘David Putz dribbles away...’” (from the Jerusalem Post in 1997) . The 15th-century poet and mystic Gavin Douglas also used it in his work, but to little avail. It remains a curiosity now, largely neglected and possibly best avoided.

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http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/ww-ycl1.htm
Gritchka

bookw56 says: Actually, I have to say that I still use "Ma'am" to talk to older women, despite being from the Northeast
My housemate Tim says "I have a computer named yclept"

SIL International, also known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics, is the only major organization conducting linguistic field work on an ongoing basis. Most linguists doing field work have the goal of first, documenting the language so that it may be preserved, and second, to discover new things about how language works in general by examining a (usually) yet-to-be-studied language. To this end, they generally publish articles in peer-reviewed journals and present papers at academic conferences. SIL, on the other hand, conducts their research with different goals.

From the SIL website (http://www.sil.org/sil/):
Founded 70 years ago, SIL International is a faith-based organization that studies, documents, and assists in developing the world’s lesser-known languages. SIL’s staff shares a Christian commitment to service, academic excellence, and professional engagement through literacy, linguistics, translation, and other academic disciplines. SIL makes its services available to all without regard to religious belief, political ideology, gender, race, or ethnic background.

The first step taken by SIL linguists is to learn enough about the language being studied so that the Bible may be translated, and most of their work is focused on proselytizing their religion. Though they strive to document languages, it seems that this goal is somewhat secondary to their goal to convert indigenous populations to evangelical Christianity. While some of the members of SIL come out of a linguistics background and do excellent work on documenting the language, which is generally published by SIL International in the form of a grammar, others have very little linguistic training and are under-qualified for the work they are doing, but are drawn into the organization out of evangelical Christian values.

SIL is a very sore spot for many linguists. Regardless of personal faith, linguists generally believe that linguistics is a science, and should thus be handled in a secular way. Furthermore, they have given field linguists a bad name within indigenous communities; I have heard stories of communities, even families, torn apart because some were converted and some were not, and locals have heard these stories as well. As a result, they are very wary about people who call themselves linguists. Linguists are also torn because SIL maintains Ethnologue, the largest database of the world's languages and their relationship to other languages. This, and other resources put out by SIL International, are quite useful and valuable to linguists (both those who work in the field and those who don't), and so we use them, despite our problems with the organization. While most linguists are faced with the difficult task of getting funding from organization such as the NSF, SIL International has large amounts of money from evangelical Christian contributors, making them able to work in the field year-round and gather more data than most linguists are able to during their ill-funded summer field trips.