$5 Words

[Senator Jack]

The following was posted by Matthew Dalton in the EVP thread, and since I had been meaning to start this as a topic...

You've basically just described my country also, at least the parts I'm familiar with, I was just attacked on a local forum for the second time, for using words a person didn't understand, I wouldn't call any of them "5 dollar words" either! Kind of off topic, so I'll leave it at that.

I've also been blasted for using a good word or two, and most notably by a presumably educated man who took me to task for using 'ameliorate' in our conversation. He claimed I was being elitist because kids in Africa don't know what ameliorate means. What his line of reason was, I'll never know, but he did get rather heated about it.

I hate having to think about the words I'm going to use, in speaking and writing, and it's a shame that one is presumed to be giving the world the high-hat by using top shelf words. Worse, is when someone snidely remarks, 'Well, I see you have a thesaurus.' It's been said that a great word should fit in a sentence like a brick in a wall - and, yes, I can tell when someone is using a word just for the sake of using it, and when it's being used in a natural manner. It's a fine line, and one I find I have to conciously walk.

I first got hooked on words while reading a few Anthony Burgess books as a kid. He put me on to 'crapulous' and 'crapulent' for intoxicating and intoxicated, both of which I often use in my writing, and then there's 'coeval' for a peer, or 'of the same era.' There's even a word he coined that I believe should really be put to good use: 'Trig', which is a portmanteau of 'trim' and 'snug'.

Other words I seem to have a bad habit of using, though I don't consider them $5 words:

Truculent
Licentious
Priapic
Bailiwick
Peripatetic
Etiolate
Dubiety
Sagacious
Feckless
Epicene
Uxorious

The list goes on. Add your own.

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

related

Marshal Biggs: It's hinky, Sam. I mean, this guy is a college graduate. He became a doctor. I mean, he ain't gonna go through here with all this security. Hinky.
Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard: Biggs, what does that mean, hinky?
Marshal Biggs: I don't know. Strange. Weird
Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard: Well, why don't you say strange or weird? I mean hinky, that has no meaning.
Marshal Biggs: Well, we say hinky.
Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard: I don't want you guys using words with no meaning.
Marshal Biggs: [Sotto voce] How about 'bulls**t?' How about 'bulls**t,' Sam?

 

[Matthew Dalton]

A story related to this was on a Current Affairs Program earlier tonight. They say our schools started to let the spelling and grammar slip around 1982.

One guy was very concerned about it, and they had a woman on who had the nerve to say spelling and grammar just weren’t important anymore. She claimed "With SMS, E-mails, MSN messaging and such it's no big deal anymore. Teachers know now it's about the messaging getting through, they don’t need to teach the kids this stuff". I was shocked that anyone of age could possibly think that.

They're doing the same thing with Math too! Filling up the school curriculum with junk and not bothering about the Math’s and English. Being born in 1987, I guess I’m also the product of this shoddy modern schooling. I just hope I’ve learned enough independently that I can get a job that pays the amount I’ll need to get my future children a Tutor! Obviously the Government can’t be trusted to do the job, and I haven’t much hope for Private Schools either.

It seems to me that the biggest part of a child's schooling today is teaching them to have a contempt for learning and learned people...

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

now it's about the messaging getting through

That's the problem. It used to be about the message getting through.

I have said my opinion about linguistic purism here and there (sometimes it wasn't even censored), but in this case, I have to concur. I don't see any inherent evil in the linguistic standard of SMS messages and the like, but this is only one out of several registers, and if it starts being the only one, I'd call it in fact an impoverishment. (Tht means teh languge s getn mo poor.)

 

[Hemingway Jones]

One should never apologize for their education.

Anyone can learn the language. There is nothing elitist about it. If it were elitist, dictionaries would cost thousands of dollars and word-of-the-day calendars would only be sold to the rich.

I am a bit obsessive with everything, including my language. I strive to speak with exacting intent, which sometimes leads me to search the archives of my mind for the precise word. Sometimes, I cannot quite grasp it and then I go to a reference book for help.

I try to use language courteously; speaking intentionally, so that my intended audience understands precisely what it is I am trying to say. Meanings are often derived by context.

 

[Feraud]

and most notably by a presumably educated man who took me to task for using 'ameliorate' in our conversation. He claimed I was being elitist because kids in Africa don't know what ameliorate means.

That is freakin' hilarious...errr I mean jocular!!

What amazes me is the audacity of people to ever correct or reprimand anyone for using proper language! Young men today uses the foulest of language in public and no one bats an eye. Sprinkle a word like facetious, rambunctious, or intercourse into a conversation and people look at you like you are a child molester.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

...and most notably by a presumably educated man who took me to task for using 'ameliorate' in our conversation. He claimed I was being elitist because kids in Africa don't know what ameliorate means.

I suppose you could have asked him whether those kids in Africa were from an English speaking country. That is an odd standard, for certain.

 

[herringbonekid]

if you pepper your speech with obscure words (which have simple meanings) and find people looking confused then you haven't really gained anything. having to stop and explain words destroys the flow of conversation. it's naive to expect everyone to understand a word like 'ameliorate'. you should have the sensitivity to weigh up the kind of vocabulary any given audience might have before hooking the big ones off the top shelf.

 

[Feraud]

There is a difference between peppering speech with words that contain more than two syllables and showing off!

it's naive to expect everyone to understand a word like 'ameliorate'. you should have the sensitivity to weigh up the kind of vocabulary any given audience might have before hooking the big ones off the top shelf.

What is more naive, not understanding a word and letting it slide or making a fool out of yourself by creating an abstract point to include African children?
I think the only fault in Senator Jack's conversation was the assuption he was conversing with an educated man.

I refuse to "dumb down" my intelligence due to the audience. The onus should be on the idiots to "catch up" and maybe open a book once in a while.

 

[scotrace]

Ebb and Flow

Like most things, language seems to be cyclical. As it is a living, ever-changing part of any culture, perhaps it is the most fluid component.


In the early twentieth century, there was a rebellion among writers in English against the flowery prose of the 18th-19th. In our world, it is probably inevitable that the language will grow in the direction of shortened words and quick phrases that can be interpreted by (probably) the receiver only. We're developing a new form of language that is adaptive to text messaging.

But finding just the right word to speak or write is a delicious hunt. I think it's a key thing to find exactly the right word to say precisely what you mean (taking a cue from one of the absolute masters, Lincoln).

Senator Jack: A favorite - Penultimate.

I once used "Facile" in courtroom testimony and both attorneys raised their heads to smile.

I wonder what is happening to French, Italian, etc.? Europe is said to be even more wirelessly tethered than the US.

 

[scotrace]

Do I remember correctly that there was a movement afoot (in the 1990's?) to alter the standard IQ test becuase it used words such as "saucer," to which many inner-city children would not be exposed, thereby skewing the result?









.

 

[Matthew Dalton]

if you pepper your speech with obscure words (which have simple meanings) and find people looking confused then you haven't really gained anything. having to stop and explain words destroys the flow of conversation. it's naive to expect everyone to understand a word like 'ameliorate'. you should have the sensitivity to weigh up the kind of vocabulary any given audience might have before hooking the big ones off the top shelf.

I considered this with the fellow that attacked me and his friends who joined him in doing so. There are some instances when this could be prudent.

It should be noted that this was the second time he decided to reproach the way I posted, the first was for using punctuation to the best of my ability. He decided I was "up myself" because of the way I typed and I was being nothing less than amiable.

I never insult them for the way they type, or correct them.

Another danger to simplifying language is that sometimes a situation is too complex to be expressed in monosyllabic terms, which is what these types demand. Many times I have been conversing with people and they have become extremely frustrated that they can’t communicate something to me, their words failed them, their education has failed them.

 

[Section10]

I like Hemingway's first post. I feel pretty much the same way. I'm no English whiz and I'm not highly educated, but I keep a dictionary right beside my computer and I use it. Sometimes a $5 word gets the idea across better than a dozen 10 cent ones. Ignorance of the language by an English speaking adult is a self-imposed handicap. Dictionaries are all over the place so let people who don't know a word look it up. That's what I do.

 

[scotrace]

Ignorance of the language by an English speaking adult is a self-imposed handicap.

And you have exactly and precisely summed the matter.


I say this when speaking to groups of young people all the time. "The way you speak will absolutely categorize you in the minds of others. Make sure they put you in the box you intended."

 

[Feraud]

I keep a dictionary right beside my computer and I use it.

Me too!
If I am in a conversation and someone uses a word I do not know, I look it up at a later date.

 

[jdjs]

This reminds me of a situation that occurred when I began teaching. I was instructing a science class in Chemistry for around two months when one of the students complained about the fact that I used "too many big words." I was stunned (to say the least), but automatically I turned around and stated that I was not about to lower my level of vocabulary, but rather suggested that the students should raise theirs (at least to the level of their grade.)

One of the English teachers happened to be passing in the hallway, heard my tirade and stuck her head into the room. "Do you know what the difference is between educated and non-educated people?" she asked the class. No response. "A vocabulary. It doesn't take an education to say 'Do you want fries with that.'"

Teaching school I have noticed a decay in the English language. As the old chestnut goes "use it or lose it."

 

[Senator Jack]

Posted by Herringbonekid:

it's naive to expect everyone to understand a word like 'ameliorate'. you should have the sensitivity to weigh up the kind of vocabulary any given audience might have before hooking the big ones off the top shelf.

Well, if the guy's going to go on about social change and the opression of the common man, I'm going to presume he's had some education, and, thus, my use of ameliorate. It was the right word for the situation, and I think what upset him, is that he knew it was the right word.

I've always said that I'm quite far from being an intellectual, but I am a well-read adult, and when I'm conversing with other adults who consider themselves to be well-read, I should be able to use any word I want. When someone else uses a word I have heard and looked up before, but that I've since forgotten its meaning, I'll always tell them just that. Memory loss isn't a particular source of embarassment for me, and I welcome the re-education.

Having spent a great deal of my life playing and bands and writing songs, I can appreciate the use of a just-so word. Would you have had Porter change, 'Up there where the air is rarefied,' simply because a large portion of the public doesn't know what rarefied means? Writers of prose are often blasted for using a thesaurus, but when you read a word that exactly works in a sentence, you'll find that unless he recasts the sentence, even the paragraph, the writer had no other choice.

Certainly, only a turgid (or is it turbid? I always get the two confused) man would use top-shelf words in ordinary conversation, but, again, in educated conversation, one shouldn't have to mind his p's and q's.

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

Senator Jack, I like the word ameliorate, I applaud you in your use of it. I have been known to use that word on ocassion.

I like big words, and it's not to be haughty or to make someone feel like less of a person, it's just because I like the way they sound. As stated, they fit into sentences like bricks in a wall. I like the thesaurus, and use the one on my computer all the time. Not so I can place a large word in a poem for the sake of it, but because I like to know all the other words that can be used. If it fits, I'll use the simplest form, or the more complicated.
This thread is making me want to bring out the dictionary and study it.

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

I suppose you could have asked him whether those kids in Africa were from an English speaking country.

By the way, children in an English-speaking country in Africa have a different vocabulary not only in that they're lacking inkhorn terms that might be known in intellectual circles of the American East Coast, but also because their vocabulary is richer in words originating in sundry African languages.

 

[jake_fink]

He claimed I was being elitist because kids in Africa don't know what ameliorate means. What his line of reason was, I'll never know, but he did get rather heated about it.


Regards,

Senator Jack

Were you talking to a kid from Africa? Were you telling him what you would tell a kid from Africa should you ever meet one? If not, then he has no argument. And, does he drive a car or take a taxi? Does he eat three squares a day and go out for cocktails when he pleases? If so, then by his own tortured logic he is being elitist because there are kids in Africa who cannot afford these luxuries.

His argmument is ludicrous. Next time you see him torture him by mispronouncing your $5 and $10 words and calling him on everything he says that is "elitist".

He: My feet hurt.
You: As long as there are double amputees who have no feet, it is elitist of you to refer to yours.
He: That doens't make sense.
You: It makes sense to me and expecting my sense to conform to your sense is elitist.
He: I'm going home.
You: You know there are people without homes...
Etc.