{"id":111639,"date":"2025-09-30T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=111639"},"modified":"2025-09-30T08:39:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:39:04","slug":"20250930-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20250930-00\/?p=111639","title":{"rendered":"Microspeak: Convicted"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you do something with conviction<\/i>, you do so with full confidence that you are correct.<\/p>\n

But what is the verb that means “To be fully confident that one is correct”?<\/p>\n

At Microsoft, it is often backformed into the verb convict<\/i> (stress on second syllable).<\/p>\n

This backformation typically happens in speech, so it’s hard to find written citations, although I did find a few.<\/p>\n

We will never know for sure, but I continue to remain highly convicted<\/span> that we are on the right track here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Be convicted<\/span> about where you’re heading, and that you are doing the most important things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are rumors that Bob is not super-convicted<\/span> about this plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I cannot find dictionary support for this usage of convicted<\/i>, but then again, I didn’t search the big guns like the Oxford English Dictionary.<\/p>\n

From what I can tell, the English verb corresponding to conviction<\/i> is simply convince<\/i>. The word conviction<\/i> apparently comes from the Latin convictionem<\/i><\/a>, which is the accusative form of convictio<\/i>, meaning “proof”, which is in turn the past participle of convincere<\/i>, which means “to convince”. So at least that lines up.<\/p>\n

But saying “I continue to remain convicted<\/span> that we are on the right track here” sounds more forceful than simply “I continue to remain convinced<\/span> that we are on the right track here.”<\/p>\n

That’s probably why the word survives. It just sounds more powerful.<\/p>\n

Bonus chatter<\/b>: This backformation strikes me as odd whenever I hear it, because I think the person is saying that they have been convicted of a crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

False backformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[105,26],"class_list":["post-111639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-microspeak","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

False backformation.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}