Jose Carillo's English Forum
English Grammar and Usage Problems => Use and Misuse => Topic started by: Eduardo (Jay) Olaguer on May 08, 2012, 11:16:23 AM
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I'm so tired of hearing Filipino newspapers refer to judges or lawmakers as "inhibiting" themselves, meaning that they withdraw from participating in a decision due to a conflict of interest. Why don't they use the word "recuse" instead of "inhibit"? Those who recuse themselves are known as "recusants," like the English Catholics who withdrew from attending Anglican "masses" during the English Reformation.
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I agree with you that “recuse” is the more precise word for the act of lawmakers of withdrawing from participation in collective decision-making owing to a conflict of interest. For some strange reason, however, “inhibit” has gained more traction than “recuse” in Philippine usage. Perhaps a lawyer among the Forum members can share with us an insider’s insight on this evident usage discrepancy.
Here’s how my digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines the two words:
recuse
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form: recused ; recusing
Etymology: Middle English, to refuse, reject, from Anglo-French recuser, from Latin recusare
Date: 1949
: to disqualify (oneself) as judge in a particular case; broadly : to remove (oneself) from participation to avoid a conflict of interest
–recusal noun
inhibit
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin inhibitus, past participle of inhibēre, from in- 2in- + habēre to have — more at HABIT
Date: 15th century
transitive verb
1 : to prohibit from doing something
2 a : to hold in check : RESTRAIN b : to discourage from free or spontaneous activity especially through the operation of inner psychological or external social constraints
intransitive verb : to cause inhibition
synonyms see FORBID
–inhibitive adjective
–inhibitory adjective
Indeed, no matter how I look at it, “inhibit” just doesn’t seem to capture the idea or context that the lawmakers are using it for.