Uneasy Rhetoric

Word choice facinates me. Why do we sometimes chose a more complicated word over a simpler one? For example, why did I chose to say “Yahoo acquires Oddpost” in the last post instead of the simpler “Yahoo buys Oddpost”?

“Buys” implies a monetary transaction, which this certainly was (rumor has it, $30 million), but it doesn’t really acknowledge what happens when one company takes over another.

In Oddpost’s case, all of the staff are moving to Yahoo!, no doubt the assets will too, and as an Oddpost customer, I am also, in a way, moving to Yahoo! Furthermore, a deal between two companies usually takes some negotiation and quite a bit of work. The more robust “acquisition” seems to be in order here.

So I did what any lazy pollster would do: I asked Google. “Yahoo acquires Oddpost” generates 1,760 results (and I’m on page 2); “Yahoo buys Oddpost” generates 6,800.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I just found it curious.