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Ah, another person who talks like a book. I also get that quite regularly. I have a bit of a personal rule, though, where I never use a more complicated word wh

Ah, another person who talks like a book. I also get that quite regularly. I have a bit of a personal rule, though, where I never use a more complicated word when a simpler one would work. After all, conversation is at heart a means of communication. Although we might get a bit of a thrill from talking over people's heads, it doesn't really mean much of anything. And all it takes is one misuse -- for example, calling Brobdingnagian a neologism -- and we tear ourselves down more than we could hope to build ourselves up.

madaxe_again 12y ago
Brobdingnagian is a neologism though. Swift quoined it scarcely two centuries ago, which is a ... Lilliputian (sorry)... amount of time in linguistic terms. I suppose it also depends on what you consider to be contemporaneous. I'm my case, this era, which opened with the enlightenment... Agreed - never use a complicated word when a simple one will do - but you either have to turn verbose or lose nuance, as we're not talking synonyms, but words which have meanings distinct from some of their more commonplace counterparts. No thrill, I just hate taking the colour out of language, and I like to share words far and wide, so they don't drift into oblivion, along with the thought and meaning behind them.
- delluminatus 12y ago
  Oh well. I guess if you want "neologism" to mean "any word invented in the past 300 years", that's your prerogative, but I take a very different meaning. One interesting side-effect of that interpretation is that "neologism" becomes autological, since it was itself coined in that period. It's true that there are sometimes nuances lost in the conversion from large to small, but there is far more nuance lost once your partner doesn't know what the hell you are saying. For you, Brobdingnagian might have some special nuance (I'm picking on that word because it is ridiculous to me), but to your partner it has no nuance or flavor -- they have no associations with that word, nor any grasp of any subtleties of meaning -- in fact they don't grasp the meaning at all. So if you are trying to get something across, it's simply a bad way to do it. I mean, don't get me wrong -- I don't want to deride big-word-users. If you want to do to because you like it -- that's obviously fine. Also, if someone does happen to have a thing with Brobdingnagian, I guess you might have just made their day a lot better. But at some point, you have to acknowledge that obscure vocabulary is more of a hindrance than a boon to communication.
nthcolumn 12y ago
You are obviously aware of my favourite; Hemingway on Faulkner:"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use." Children may be precocious and tolerable. I recall the joy of finding new words - grownup words. Most people find it pretentious and condescending in adults. It is poor communication. Want a game of who can think of the most obscure word? Firstly I tried 'widdershins'. Let's exclude Brobdingnagian as an obvious neologism. (Not trolling - really can't see why you think it ain't?)

madaxe_again 12y ago

Brobdingnagian is a neologism though. Swift quoined it scarcely two centuries ago, which is a ... Lilliputian (sorry)... amount of time in linguistic terms. I suppose it also depends on what you consider to be contemporaneous. I'm my case, this era, which opened with the enlightenment... Agreed - never use a complicated word when a simple one will do - but you either have to turn verbose or lose nuance, as we're not talking synonyms, but words which have meanings distinct from some of their more commonplace counterparts. No thrill, I just hate taking the colour out of language, and I like to share words far and wide, so they don't drift into oblivion, along with the thought and meaning behind them.

delluminatus 12y ago
Oh well. I guess if you want "neologism" to mean "any word invented in the past 300 years", that's your prerogative, but I take a very different meaning. One interesting side-effect of that interpretation is that "neologism" becomes autological, since it was itself coined in that period. It's true that there are sometimes nuances lost in the conversion from large to small, but there is far more nuance lost once your partner doesn't know what the hell you are saying. For you, Brobdingnagian might have some special nuance (I'm picking on that word because it is ridiculous to me), but to your partner it has no nuance or flavor -- they have no associations with that word, nor any grasp of any subtleties of meaning -- in fact they don't grasp the meaning at all. So if you are trying to get something across, it's simply a bad way to do it. I mean, don't get me wrong -- I don't want to deride big-word-users. If you want to do to because you like it -- that's obviously fine. Also, if someone does happen to have a thing with Brobdingnagian, I guess you might have just made their day a lot better. But at some point, you have to acknowledge that obscure vocabulary is more of a hindrance than a boon to communication.

nthcolumn 12y ago

You are obviously aware of my favourite; Hemingway on Faulkner:"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use." Children may be precocious and tolerable. I recall the joy of finding new words - grownup words. Most people find it pretentious and condescending in adults. It is poor communication. Want a game of who can think of the most obscure word? Firstly I tried 'widdershins'. Let's exclude Brobdingnagian as an obvious neologism. (Not trolling - really can't see why you think it ain't?)