Patronize

I must have picked up on something in the two years I spent in OZ, many, many years ago. All my adult life (post-OZ) I have used the word frequently in both meanings and definitely have always pronounced it "patt" for both usages. Damned Aussies rub off on you! Claro que si!

Canadian English accent here, and I would say "paytronizing" in both sentences. Somehow, patt-ronising sounds British to me. This said, I wouldn't use the word much in the first sense either.

Regardless of how we might say patronize or patronize (pay or patt), I think we all say patron as paytron. One of those curious oddities in the English language, like the British "private" (pry-vat) and "privacy" (prih-vussee). At least, in British RP as I recall it (not how MY English grandmother might have pronounced it, I think, but then, she spoke nothing like RP).

A few years back in Canada the federal party in power became involved in what was called "the patronage scandal," and as I recall, it was always pronounced "paytronage." But patronage is more clearly linked with the noun patron, where patronizing, as in "patronizing remark" has a different connotation.

Now I'm off to look them up and see if I can figure out why!

I'm a Brit from the southern UK, and would use 'patt' in both senses. 'Pay'-tronise sounds quite odd to me, though of course patron on its own is always 'pay-'.

I spent a bit of time looking at a few different definitions. The word "patron" is derived from the latin pater, and generally refers to someone who promotes a person or cause: patron of the arts, patron saint, etc.

The word relationships get interesting when you look at patron-client relationships, which are best known from ancient Rome but occurred in other cultures as well, that a senior, well-established person in society would take a younger, weaker, less wealthy or less connected person under their protection and promote them in society. One source makes the point that the patron-client relationship, unlike a contractual agreement, is modelled on family ties, hence the derivation from pater+ or +pater familias.

Patronage is directly connected with the meaning of patron in this sense. In the Canadian patronage scandal, the issue was that government contracts were given to businesses based on a prior relationship or an exchange of favours, rather than based on merit or open tender. The word "patronage" has taken on a somewhat dirty implication in Canada as a result.

However, when we use the word "patronize" as in "patronize a business," the word patron is equivalent to client as in customer. So in that usage, the sense of what a "patron" does has flipped around somewhat.

I've been unable to find any specific etymology for patronize in the sense of condescending. It's fairly easy to infer, that someone who behaves like a patron toward a client might act in a condescending way, but so far it hasn't been spelled out anywhere I've found. And while it can be inferred, it's not obvious.

Well, it would follow from the same kind of parent-child relationship, no?

A patron of an artist gives the artist work, or buys the artist's art.
A patron of a store makes sure the store has business.
It's all an extension of the original meaning of a father figure who protects a younger/weaker person. (Though we may not think of patronizing a store that way.)

Someone who is patronizing is also talking to someone as if the other is an ignoramus. Belittling the other, as a parent might talk to a child.

Lord Chesterfield had backed out of a promise to support Samuel Johnson in making his dictionary. Johnson then defined "patron" as "a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery."

Edited by: VinnyD

When you edit a message, there's a box showing the "Edited by: VinnyD" text and a line above it saying something like "This text shows by whom and when the post was edited." I have already thought it would be good if it did show when the post was edited, so that you could see what later posts were responding to a different text. But it doesn't, although somebody at TT apparently thinks it does.

That must be on their list of things to fix. It's a good idea. (But you can 'untoggle' (toggle out? toggle off?) the box near that line, so that it won't show "edited by: YourName".)