individuals, ..." Disputed usage: "The committee is several NBA owners, including committee chair Clay Bennett of Oklahoma City." contact – First used in the 1920s as a transitive verb meaning "to get into contact or in touch with (a person)", AHD5 notes that its usefulness and popularity have worn down resistance. In 1969, only 34 percent of the Usage Panel accepted its use, but in 1988, 65 percent of the Panel accepted it in the sentence She immediately called an officer at the Naval Intelligence Service, who in turn contacted the FBI. In 2004, 94 percent accepted contact in this same sentence. D deprecate – The original meaning in English is "deplore" or "express disapproval of" (the Latin from which the word derives means "pray to avert evil", suggesting that some event would be a calamity). The word is now also used to mean "play down", "belittle" or "devalue", a shift that some disapprove of, as it suggests the word is being confused with the similar word depreciate; in fact, AHD4 states that in this sense deprecate has almost completely supplanted depreciate; however, a majority of the dictionary's Usage Panel approved this sense. Its use with the approximate meaning to declare obsolescent in computer jargon is also sometimes condemned. diagnose – Cochrane (2004) states that to "diagnose [someone] with a disease" is an incorrect usage of the verb diagnose, which takes the physician as subject and a disease as object (e.g. "to diagnose cancer"). In American English, according to AHD4 and M-W, the sense of "diagnose [someone] with a disease" is listed without comment or tag; however, for its part, RH does not list such a usage, with or without comment. For British English, COD11 offers "identify the medical condition of (someone): she was diagnosed as having epilepsy (2004); this usage, however, did not appear in editions as recently as the 1990s. Chambers does not offer this sense at all. Disputed usage: Mr. Smith was diagnosed with diabetes. Undisputed usage: The doctor diagnosed diabetes. different – Standard usage in both the UK and USA is "different from" (on the analogy of "to differ from"). In the UK, this competes with "different to" (coined on the analogy of "similar to"). In America, it competes with "different than" (coined on the analogy of "other than"). "Different to" is also found in Irish, South African, Australian, and New Zealand English. Undisputed usage: The