I'm talking about native English speakers. It's not as grating if it comes from a non-native speaker, who you know hasn't mastered the language yet. When a native speaker says it, it feels like they should know better and are intentionally trying to make themselves sound smart.

I think a lot of the usage you reference is blindly picked up in corporate environments, and has little to do with trying to 'sound smart'. My wife laughs at my vocabulary on my Zoom calls. After listening to myself, I have to agree.

So what I'm hearing is that your ask for everyone is to not leverage obvious linguistic synergies in order to enhance the listening experience?

Romanian is an example of the exact same thing. It did not inherit a utiliza from Latin, rather it borrowed it in the 19th century from French utiliser, because French was viewed as the posh and intellectual language then. Before that, for ‘to use’ Romanians just used the (Greek loan)word a folosi, which is generally more common than a utiliza even today.

I think a better correspondence is "a utiliza" -> "to utilize" and "a folosi" -> "to use".

Edit: Mediterraneo10 explains it better.