I used to be obsessed with words. I had a dictionary and a thesaurus on the floor by my bed at all times. If ever I came across a word whilst reading (which I also did, and still do i guess, an awful lot of) that I didn't know, I would look it up. If ever I was having an argument with someone about the meaning of a word, I would look it up to prove I was right, and I usually was. If I was thinking about things after I went to bed and I couldn't quite find the word I was looking for in my head, I would look it up.
I am still intensely curious about different words; about from where they are derived, their meaning and spelling. There are words i just love the sound of. There are words that get stuck in my head, I run over the spelling of them time and time again. However, today it saddened me to realise that I don't put as much effort into new words as i used to. I don't use new words nearly as often as I'd like, and though I still love words, I'm not nearly as fussy about my speech and grammar as I was.
"The Grammar Nazi," one of my friends used to call me. This was mainly because i couldn't help but correct others' incorrect use of grammar, spelling, pronunciation or just plain meaning (perhaps it's the teacher in me). I don't do that any more. Perhaps I've become desensitised to it. I often type as I would speak, quite casually, instead of formal writing, and I speak less carefully. Don't get me wrong, I can still write and type with perfect grammar, sentence structure and punctuation if necessary, I just often can't be bothered. I spend hours each day reading blogs, newspaper articles, other web-based material, much of which is not particularly well-written. Not to mention the people I work with, none of whom speak well. I guess though, that it's not important to them, and I guess it's not important to me that I do it all the time, but that I can if I want to.
Words that I wish i used more often in every day conversation:
avuncular
benevolent
malison
gregarious
maudlin
serendipitous
ignominy
subterfuge
halcyon
scintillating
vendetta
effervescent
malicious
paroxysm
supercilious
Words glorious words.
6 comments:
Don't Use Big Words!
Next time, in promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations.
Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, prurient jocosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent!!
** ** In other words, talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully, purely. Keep from slang; don't put on airs; say what you mean; mean what you say. And, don't use big words!"
I wish I'd come up with this but I found it ammusing. And Tam that Raymond E. Feist book is still on my shelf.
I'd like to think that's exactly what i do - the talk plainly, briefly, naturally bit that is... not the first part :-p
oh my god,
you sound just like me
l3nny i like the fact that of the 2 sentences that you actually came up with on your own in that post, a grand total of TWO of the words have more than one syllable. One of those is a proper noun (someone's name) and the other is misspelled.
mmmm - but who had to ask how to spell syllable?
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
Post a Comment