These words refer to putting something to work, with or without altering it in the process. Use is the most general and informal of these, and there is no context within which it would not be suitable for expressing this activity, whether or not the object involved is altered in the process: using a dictionary to check his spelling; using about ten gallons of petrol a week. When the word is applied to a person, a strong note of disapproval for the act is evident: the egotist who uses other people as if they were doormats. When use occurs with the preposition "up," the word refers to the total depletion of the thing in question and often suggests waste or extravagance: using up the last of his water supply; using up his gifts in a brief burst of youthful profligacy.

Consume and expend emphasize the alteration or depletion of the thing used. At their most concrete, the words contrast sharply in that consume refers to the taking in of something, as in eating, and expend refers to the paying out of something: asking how many bushels of fodder his herd consumed in a day; expending no more than a quarter of your earnings in rent. Consume particularly emphasizes the total depletion or destruction of something: the number of trees consumed to make the newsprint in one edition of your newspaper. But destruction need not be the word’s main point: the energy consumed in debating the project. Related uses cast light on the word’s connotation in this context: ravenously consuming a full four-course dinner; a building consumed by fire; consumed with envy. None of these connotations of haste, waste or destruction is present in one of the most popular meanings of the word, referring in business or economic parlance to the purchase or turnover (and presumably use ) of goods: a more sophisticated public that consumes an ever greater variety of products. Beyond its references to depletion or the paying out of money, expend can point, like consume , to the using of non-material things: expending a good deal of effort on the term paper. In the parlance of military supply, it functions exactly like consume in its business sense, but in this case the word suggests the actual using up , wearing out or destruction of perishable military goods: not required to account for toilet gear and other items that are considered expended upon issue; expended rounds of ammunition.

Employ has a legitimate use to refer to the using of hired workers of any kind: a company that employs many thousands of people. In other situations, it can seem a needless substitute for use , perhaps resorted to in the hope that its greater formality will lend status or objectivity: employing a spatula to turn the eggs. Here, the clarity and brevity of use would prevent pretentiousness. Similarly, use can in every instance be substituted for utilize , with an invariable gain in directness and clarity. But, like employ , utilize has a distinct sphere of meaning all its own, referring to the conversion necessary to make something useful, a meaning now largely ignored: underwater oil deposits that had no value before science taught us how to utilize them. More often, the word appears indiscriminately in place of use: utilizing a chafing dish to serve the casserole.