"identify . . . from"

[Marc Velasco]

I can only think of using it as "identify Trait X, from Related Data Y."

something like .... identifying potential Mayan archaeological sites from
NASA's NEATO satellite data.



On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      "identify . . . from"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A "Yahoo! News" item about the undesirability of prostate-cancer screening
> for men over the age of 75 contains this phrasing:
>
> ". . . there is no foolproof method of identifying aggressive tumors from
> slow-growing ones."
>
> I believe I have heard (and seen) that use of "identify" in place of
> "distinguish" or "differentiate" on other occasions lately.  Is it becoming
> ordinary?  The "identify . . . from" construction is not easily searchable
> online!
>
> --Charlie
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