Why do people use big words?

[Mise]

Why is it that some people use big words when a little word would suffice? Sometimes, I agree, using a big word adds meaning to what you're saying, and smaller synonyms don't quite get the exact meaning across. But most of the time, people use big synonyms of small words just to sound clever. Most of the time, it doesn't add meaning at all, and just ends up confusing people, REDUCING the ease at which listeners/readers can understand, and causing confusion, especially if someone doesn't know what the word means.

Words can evoke different feelings/emotions/tones in the listener/reader, and some of those feelings can be completely different if you don't know what the word means. For example, vociferous sounds like a nasty word (like a dinosaur or something), but it just means loud or outspoken, or sometimes enthusiastic. The first time I heard that word, it could have easily been replaced with "loud" or some other smaller word, but instead, someone decided to say vociferous, and it confused the hell out of me. Similarly, contrived sounds like an insult, but it's not really (although it is a negative adjective), so the first time my English teacher wrote "sounds rather contrived", I thought she was insulting me (at the time I thought it meant narrow minded or something like that), but she was just taking the piss out of my plot cos it was a bit weird.

So what I'm trying to say is, big words can be useful in some cases, but if a big word doesn't add anything to the sentence, get rid of it and use a smaller word. What's really funny, though, is when people use big words, but use them wrong, like my mum does all the time, or say them wrong, like irregardless.

 

[Singularity]

My personal problem as a non-native english writer is that most of my english school books and theoretical books is based upon a much too complicated academical english. Long sentences and words that can put your tongue and head into a knot are much too frequent in those books. And in some cases I see many European students/academics mimicking those styles by both using big words too often, and llike you say - in the wrong places.

The context of the terminology can sometimes raise conflicting ideas of the context of the sentence where it was put forth.

 

[IglooDame]

Perhaps you think the big words aren't adding any finer shades of meaning because you don't have a full understanding of the finer shades of meaning that they represent?

Vociferous, to me, doesn't simply mean loud.

 

[Mise]

@Singularity:
Yeah I guess it's different if you don't speak English as your native language, and I guess it depends on how you learnt English.

@IglooDude:
In the particular case I'm refering to (for which I can't remember the exact wording right now), vociferous could have been replaced by loud and/or outspoken with no meaning lost. It was one of my teachers who was commenting on the loudmouth know-it-all in our class. Indeed, it could well be another case where the big word vociferous was being used incorrectly or inaccurately, since vociferous (now that I know the meaning) connotes quite a different feeling to the one the teacher was attempting to describe about the loudmouth. You could say he used the word vociferous in a contrived way

 

[Birdjaguar]

But most of the time, people use big synonyms of small words just to sound clever. Most of the time, it doesn't add meaning at all, and just ends up confusing people

Stop finding fault with other people's expanded vocabularies and start learning new words that will enhance yours. Rather than assume their motivations are shallow, why see it as an opportunity to educate yourself. Using more words will improve your reading, writing and speaking.

 

[Scuffer]

Using big words just to impress people is stupid and you'll look an idiot if you don't really understand what they mean. Using words you know the person you are talking to won't understand is rude. However, long words are not just synonyms for shorter ones. It usually takes lots of short words to get the meaning of a single longer one across.

 

[Mise]

Stop finding fault with other people's expanded vocabularies and start learning new words that will enhance yours. Rather than assume their motivations are shallow, why see it as an opportunity to educate yourself. Using more words will improve your reading, writing and speaking.

It's not that people use big words, it's when they use them in places they don't need to be used. For example, the above sentence could be written: It's not that orators command and effortlessly manipulate an extensive vocabulary, it's when they utilise such verbal skill in improper situations. Did that really add anything to the sentence? Of course not, it just sounds more sophisticated, and in many cases, the bigger word is actually quite innaccurate (e.g. orator - it needn't be an orator, it could be a writer; command - they needn't command it, merely they have a thesaurus at hand). Using such vocabulary blurs sentences, decreases readability, and unnecessarily obfuscates what is otherwise a simple message.

When I was taught to write creatively (by a writer by trade I might add), I was taught that "you should only add something to the story if it adds something to the story". If a word, phrase, paragraph, page, or chapter adds nothing to the story, get rid of it. The same thinking applies to big words. If they're used in place of another more simple word which would suffice, use the simple word, because often the bigger word has other connotations which you don't want the reader to connote!

That's not to say that I don't often use big words. In many cases, where getting accurate meaning across to the listener/reader is of the utmost importance, I spend most of my time reading over the same sentence or paragraph, crossing bits out, adding bit in, changing bits around, and interchanging words with more accurate synonyms. But I only do this if it's neccessary, and not to sound clever. I dare say most people on this board don't think about the meaning of the word and it's significance in the sentence, only it's length and sophistication...

 

[Provolution]

Well, you see what happens, the man of small words become President, intellectual minimalism is trendy, or in this thread "easygoing" or "simplethink" is a philosophy that should equalize people, but instead deny individualism. Labor union leaders and sales people are the premier proponents/first users of this concept/thing. It could be envy, it could be stupidity, it could be vanity or it could be something else.

I am not going to simplify my language to gang up with the Ricky Lake audience and gain cheap popular support I do not need.

 

[The Omega]

Because we can?

 

[Pirate]

You answered your own question in the first post. What's the debate here?

 

[Birdjaguar]

It's not that people use big words, it's when they use them in places they don't need to be used. For example, the above sentence could be written: It's not that orators command and effortlessly manipulate an extensive vocabulary, it's when they utilise such verbal skill in improper situations.

Your sentence is poorly written and punctuated; it needs an additional clause at the end: "...in improper situations, that really irks me."

Word use is part of one's writing style. I suggest you develop your own and stop worrying about the fact that other people have different styles.

 

[Jawz II]

i dont use big words, and i dont like authors who do,i read alot, so hemingway i like, some guy with more words than imagination,i dont like

its just what you said, people wanting to sound smarter than they are!

also im not too fund of spelling nazis neither!

 

[Scuffer]

It's not that people use big words, it's when they use them in places they don't need to be used. For example, the above sentence could be written: It's not that orators command and effortlessly manipulate an extensive vocabulary, it's when they utilise such verbal skill in improper situations.

The second sentence is a little contrived... Seriously though, if you are writing, the way in which you use language affects how the text reads, the feeling around it. The words and structure you would use for a thriller is different than for romance. As far as I am concerned, any word is allowable, so long as it is appropriate in context.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

I have cogitated on your submitted postulate and reject the premise in its entirety. Individuals who descant in a magniloquent and euphuistic fashion are merely utilizing their innate neurological verbal processing capabilities to their fullest.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I have cogitated on your submitted postulate and reject the premise in its entirety. Individuals who descant in a magniloquent and euphuistic fashion are merely utilizing their innate neurological verbal processing capabilities to their fullest.

This is actually funny becase all those "smart words" you've used have mainly latin roots. As such, it looks a lot like French ! So very simple for me to understand actually.

 

[Mise]

The second sentence is a little contrived... Seriously though, if you are writing, the way in which you use language affects how the text reads, the feeling around it. The words and structure you would use for a thriller is different than for romance. As far as I am concerned, any word is allowable, so long as it is appropriate in context.

Yeah that's pretty much what I'm saying. I'm not trying to stop people from using big words, but rather, to use them only if the big word's meaning is more accurate than any other word they can think of.

Your sentence is poorly written and punctuated; it needs an additional clause at the end: "...in improper situations, that really irks me."

Yeah, thanks. Speaking of style, the style I was using in the first sentence was as if spoken. I don't particularly care if my grammar is poor or the punctuation is off or the words are not big, because to do so is not in keeping with the style of my writing thus far. I've attempted to use a mixture of big words and less sophisticated ones, ranging from low-brow idioms and the vernacular (such as "I've" and "yeah") to big words with wide ranging but clear meanings (such as "vernacular"), in order to demostrate how easy it is to use small words as effectively as big words. The sentence was poorly written deliberately. It's pretty obvious that the sentence was written in a deliberately contrived way. I thought so anyway.

Word use is part of one's writing style. I suggest you develop your own and stop worrying about the fact that other people have different styles.

That's another thing, "one". I sincerely doubt that saying "one's" instead of "your" significantly improves the readability or clarity of the sentence. So why use it? Because it sounds sophisticated? Or perhaps you're just one of those people who uses words such as "one" in every day speech (the Queen's English and all that)? Though you probably used it for the sake of proper grammar, I'm sure you'll agree that it carries an air of superiority.

 

[Mise]

I have cogitated on your submitted postulate and reject the premise in its entirety. Individuals who descant in a magniloquent and euphuistic fashion are merely utilizing their innate neurological verbal processing capabilities to their fullest.

That, or their word processor has a thesaurus built in

 

[Bozo Erectus]

That, or their word processor has a thesaurus built in

Either that, or they have a link to Dictionary.com and use the thesaurus feature

Marla, funny you should mention that, I was thinking of making a word origins thread just now.

 

[betazed]

After perusing this thread and ruminating on it a bit, I cannot help but arrive at the conjecture that the initial posters null hypothesis is erroneous at best and at worst suffers from the flaw of foisting on others ulterior motives for the use of their copious vocabulary which the afore-mentioned poster finds unduly ostentatious. As someone who considers himself articulate enough to use the appropriate words I vehemently deny that I have any such said motives.

j/k

But seriously, a decent vocab goes far in expressiing your thoughts correctly. There are shades of meaning that are not quite expressed without the right word. As Mark Twain famously said ""The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter—it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

In any case, we can hardly express all our emotions and thoughts given the pitiful faults of our speech. Why encumber it more by constraining yourself to a few thousand words.

 

[IglooDame]

That's another thing, "one". I sincerely doubt that saying "one's" instead of "your" significantly improves the readability or clarity of the sentence. So why use it? Because it sounds sophisticated? Or perhaps you're just one of those people who uses words such as "one" in every day speech (the Queen's English and all that)? Though you probably used it for the sake of proper grammar, I'm sure you'll agree that it carries an air of superiority.

As someone who uses 'one' instead of 'you', I'd say that one uses one because one would not want to unintentionally point fingers as one might do when one uses 'you'. If it carries an air of superiority then such is life - I am going to use language appropriate to the audience, and given that CFC OT appears to have some pretty literate (even those whose English is a second or third language) and thoughtful people in it, I think using 'one' is appropriate to the audience.