Simple Words
Literary, Musings March 9th, 2007iNET has its first hostee again! Go visit Anne! She’s got a very pretty layout up AND she’s doing a course on culinary arts! Here’s hoping that she’ll post up some recipes or tips. :P
I realise late that I no longer am as enamoured with long, “pretty” and/or obscure words as I once was years ago. I remember I used to be drawn to not so much using, but more so enchanted with lengthy words. Words like “eternity”, “luminescence”, “symphony” etc etc. Heck, I’ve written prose that have too many of “pretty words” and immortalised.net itself harkens to that idea. But nowadays… they are less impressive. Rather, I’m finding smaller, simpler, everyday words to be quite enchanting unto themselves. For example, nowadays I’d find myself much more endeared to the word “bubble” than, say, “effervescence” though it might’ve been different a few years back.
I have nothing against using sophisticated language but I think maybe nowadays I’m more critical of context? Sometimes big words are just out of place. I find it a little laughable when some blog entries I stumble across (for example) whose author writes with needlessly big words (and many of them) to describe rather mundane and ordinary situations. I think it’s very possible to tell when someone has to use a more sophisticated jargon because nothing else would fit what they are trying to say and when someone is telling something with big words picked out of a thesaurus. For example (completely made up), it’s the difference between:
“I went shopping today and I found a totally swanky top!”
and,
“I traversed to my local shopping complex this morn whereby I located a splendiferous shirt!”
Okay, so it’s a bit of a straw man, but hopefully my point comes across. At least the point I was trying to make is swanky > splendiferous (at least in this context).
I understand that blog entries are grounds to rummage through ideas and explore thoughts and I completely empathise with writing in a pseudo-stream-of-consciousness way where the point might take a little while to get to. However, I find it completely unnecessary (and definitely not impressive) when a person use big words that don’t quite fit what they’re saying, just so they might seem sophisticated. Maybe it would’ve impressed 16 year old Belinda, but not this one.
Having said all that, big words can be used hilariously. For example, the famous Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch where verbosity is given a substantial nudge in the ribs. An exercept:
“…And I thought to myself, ‘a little fermented curd will do the trick’. So I curtailed my Walpoling activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles.”
<3 Monty Python.
Oh, and many thumbs up for clever neologisms, which brings to mind the hilarious ones that Steven Colbert has made up over the years. Superstantial!
5 Responses to “Simple Words”
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Ah, purple prose/thesaurus humping; a bugbear of mine from ages back (mostly due to the fact that it is obnoxiously common in certain RP communities, often to the extent that if you don’t use at least one incomprehensible word per sentence you can get thrown out of some groups for not being ‘literate’ enough).
To be honest, I’ve always thought that the ability to not use big words is a mark of literary maturity. Authors throughout the ages from Horace to Mark Twain tend to agree, too, so I’m in good company on that belief. 6^^
Omfg. I completely agree (as always). I also agree with Dee: “To be honest, I’ve always thought that the ability to not use big words is a mark of literary maturity.”
Well spoken. Both of yous.
I think using more complex words all the time simply shows that your pompous with your writing. It’s great to know all these fancy words but if you put them in the wrong context then you look like a fool but for some reason many people are happily oblivious to this. As for me, I love words. My friends believe that I use overly long words. I don’t - I think my idea of “sophisticated” writing is light years different from theirs.
Ah, I remember those days. I think I fell into that trap too, and I mistook big words for good writing. Oh, silly me. Nowadays I can easily tell who is truly articulate and who had to open their thesaurus when reading their entries. :P
Surely you must admit though, that a person writing a blog is attempting to communicate aspects of themselves to their reader. Overly elaborate, verbose language is certainly the classier road to declaring to the world “I’m an impression-obsessed douchebag, who thinks people will be impressed by this because I’m simple enough to be impressed by this when I see it elsewhere”.
Its generally good policy to offer evidence instead of anecdote. :P