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Password123

If someone's using 123 at the end, it's likely to fill complexity requirements, so a capital will round that out.

Re: Hold Security was leveraging its claimed discovery

@AC

Are you actually calling the author a 'pretentious twat'? May I suggest that the next time such a sentiment overcomes you, you instead use the time to close your Register account.

Now, the use of 'leverage' as a verb is questionable, though rather common and the ubiquity of the word can distract people from the fact that leverage is a verb (lever) turned into a noun.

You lever (v) something to create leverage (n), just as you marry (v) someone to create marriage (n). When you dote, the result is dotage, when you store, there is storage and when you pwn, there is pwnage.*

'Leverage', when used as a verb, is a taking a verb (lever), turning in into a noun (leverage) and then using that noun as a verb.

That aside, I am firmly in the descriptive camp when it comes to grammar and the simple fact is that 'leverage' is used as a noun and even recognised as such by the OED. In this I think it is correct as, while a verb already exists ('lever'), it is not necessarily adequate for this task.

When using the verb 'lever', you apply it to the object you are moving. With 'leverage', used as a verb, it is applied to the object you are using to do the levering - the counter weight essentially. Thus, using the existing verb (lever) doesn't convey the same sense and the sentence becomes ugly if you try. Even then, it is likely to be confusing.

Looking at it this way, it is similar to the verb 'commentate'. One might say that a commentator comments but most people would agree that to do so would lose some of the information contained in the word 'commentate'. I can comment on the football last night but that is not the same as someone who was commentating.

We should never forget that the purpose of grammar is to phrase our thoughts clearly in a way that can be understood. When given a choice between clarity and grammatical correctness, erring on the side of clarity is generally the better option.

BUT, all grammar questions aside, and dealing with whether this instance of the word is 'pretentious' or not, we have to ask if the simple verb 'use' would convey the same idea as efficiently.

So let's look at it.

The common usage and understanding of the verb 'leverage' is to make use of a relatively small quantity of resources to obtain a larger quantity of resources, just as one does when operating a lever. In this sense, you can't simply replace 'leverage' with 'use' without loosing some of the meaning or needing to add extra data to the sentence.

This is because, although 'leverage' is very much a buzzword and frequently used indiscriminately, 'use' is very generic. Unlike the more specific verb 'leverage' (or 'lever'), it conveys no information about why or how you are using something. This is because 'leveraging' is, essentially, a method for 'using' one thing to accomplish another thing, with the implication that the method allows someone to get more back than is put in.

* - Not all -age words are exclusively nouns, of course, and it all depends on the origins of the word in question. For leverage, the origin the verb (not noun) 'lever'.