Is 'additised' a real word?

[plowter]

There's a new advert for Esso fuel and the small print describes performance 'compared to additised fuel'. Is 'additised' a real word?

[Ellipsis]

One man who additized lots of words to our collective vocabularies was George W. Bush (hence the zee spelling).

Talking of Americans, my pet peeve in ads is the Enterprise car hire one, with the Brit and American arguing over the pronunciation of "aluminium". The Brit says "It's got a U in it," but the difference in spelling between the British and American versions is an I, not a U.

[Old_Geezer]

Perhaps it wasn't the spelling he was on about, but how, whatever was there, is pronunced ?

[Ellipsis]

Yes, they are talking about the pronunication, which is exactly how it's spelt in each case:

aluminum
aluminium

The British version has an[other] I in it. Both versions have two U's.

[Quizmonster]

Yes, Ich, I'm well aware of the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. However, in the circumstances we're discussing, it did nor seem to me to be too great a 'leap' from one usage to the other, given what we all know about language's constant tendency to evolve.
I agree that the advert gets it utterly wrong, Ellipsis, but Sir Humphrey Davy who discovered aluminium in 1807 originally called it 'alumium' without an 'ni', before altering it to ‘alumina’ and then changing it yet again to 'aluminum' still without the second 'i'. Later, the editor of a British scientific journal changed it to 'aluminium' "in preference,” he said, “to aluminum which has a less classical sound." Presumably he wanted it to chime with sodium, potassium, chromium etc.
However, it has to be said that the man who discovered it finally called it exactly what the AMERICANS now call it, not what WE call it! The supposedly “missing 'i'" British people often refer to didn't GO... in fact, it CAME! So who’s really right, those who accept the discoverer’s nomenclature or those who accept an obscure magazine editor’s nomenclature?

But still…the advert is ghastly!

[FredPuli43]

Except for the fact that Davy himself used 'aluminium' in a book he published in 1812, the complaint that the spelling was only the preference of some 'obscure' journalist wou be an excellent one.

[Ellipsis]

As far as the ad's concerned, just say the two words out loud:

aluminum
aluminium

and ask yourself what's different about the second one. It's not, as the ad claims, "It's got a U in it."

[Quizmonster]

I suspect you may have misunderstood the OED entry for aluminium, Fred, if that's where you got the information you supply. The 1812 quote was, in fact, from The Quarterly Review and not a book by Davy himself. The very magazine and editor I spoke of yesterday!