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>I suppose Stephen Fry hasn't noticed, but many people who use several swear words in every sentence actually don't seem to have a large working vocabulary. Wh
by Avshalom 14y ago
>I suppose Stephen Fry hasn't noticed, but many people who use several swear words in every sentence actually don't seem to have a large working vocabulary.
What Fry noticed is that many people use several swear words in every sentence period full stop <blink>.</blink> He's claiming it's orthogonal to working vocabulary size.
- randallsquared 14y agoI addressed that in the previous sentence: if it's orthogonal to working vocabulary size, then it must be positively correlated with verbosity. That could be true, but I can't tell from personal experience.
- Avshalom 14y agoOnly if vocabulary size already has some specific correlation with verbosity but it's easy to use many words or very few words regardless of vocab size. Something can be "truly fucking staggeringly-ass colossal" or it can be "fucking tall". Something can just as easily be "fucking colossal" or "god damn motherfucking-ass tall". Yeah if you're the sort that "truly staggeringly colossal" comes naturally to you'd see a difference in emphasis, but they're equivalent to Joe Shitpack.
- Swizec 14y agoAh, but some things are "amazing" while other things are "amazeballs".