Dr. Techie - 27 April 2011 09:42 AM
“See:" would be more appropriate as a rendition of vide.
Viz. (videlicet) is not imperative and is more accurately interpreted as “namely”, “that is”, “to wit”, or something along those lines.
I actually knew this but the knowledge was somewhere other than easily available when reading aloud. I do often find myself reading “Viz.” aloud as “see:"--but thinking more, it depends a lot on the material. Just an observation of an unfortunate habit. I may have been caught up by mis-applying the “to see” or the “to wit” aspect:
viz.
1540, abbreviation of videlicet “that is to say, to wit, namely"(1464), from L. videlicet, contraction of videre licet “it is permissible to see,” from videre “to see” (see vision) + licet “it is allowed,” third person singular present indicative of licere “be allowed.” The -z- is not a letter, but originally a twirl, representing the usual M.L. shorthand symbol for the ending -et. “In reading aloud usually rendered by ‘namely.’ “ [OED]
I internalized a huge amount of language-related information early on--obviously much of it incorrect. I have taken some small comfort from the adage: “It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” That I know the more correct rendering allows me to gracefully recover while reading, if I find myself boxed in by habit and context, though this is at the expense of some economy of words. If in quote, rather than reading for meaning aloud to others, I will invariably pronounce Viz. as in “fizz.”
This is an illustration of the utility I have found in the forum. I had not thought much about “Viz.” for a long while. I don’t know when I might have thought about it again but for this thread. I look forward to my next “live” encounter with the term. I think my reading will be the better for this encounter.
