About six weeks ago, the editors of Collins English Dictionary announced they were thinking of dropping the following words from the next edition because they’re not used enough (dictionaries are descriptive; they reflect actual use of language and therefore do not record ‘dead’ words):
abstergent: cleansing or scouring
agrestic: rural, rustic, unpolished, uncouth
apodeictic: unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
caducity: perishableness, senility
caliginosity: dimness, darkness
compossible: possible in coesistence with something else
embrangle: to confuse or entangle
exuviate: to shed (a skin or similar outer covering)
fatidical: prophetic
fubsy: short and stout, squat
griseous: streaked or mixed with grey, somewhat grey
malison: a curse
mansuetude: gentleness or mildness
muliebrity: the condition of being a woman
niddering: cowardly
nitid: bright, glistening
olid: foul-smelling
oppugnant: combative, antagonistic, or contrary
periapt: a charm or amulet
recrement: waste matter, refuse, dross
reborant: tending to fortify or increase strength
skirr: a whirring or grating sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
vaticinate: to foretell, prophesy
vilipend: to treat or regard with contempt
Now. There’s a writing rule that says you should 1) only use words you’re familiar with, and 2) with synonyms, you should choose the simpler word over the more complicated word.
There’s good reasons for this rule: new writers do tend to assume longer words make them sound more authoritative whereas such multi-syllable monstrosities can be cluttering and ruinous to rhythm; there’s also the fact if you choose a word from a thesaurus rather than from solid knowledge of its application, you might miss its nuances and muddy your meaning. And then there’s the stupid part of the reasoning: we couldn’t possibly want to make our readers reach for a dictionary to find out the meaning of a word they haven’t encountered before.
But look! Look at the result of the rule. It’s killing words! Killing them, I say. Or, for the sake of precision and accuracy (over-rated!), it is making writers and readers lazy.
If you comfortably accept this rule as a writer, you won’t stretch yourself to finding the perfect word: you just go ahead and use ‘smelly’ instead of ‘olid’ (and by the way, ‘smelly’ didn’t used to mean smelling bad – that’s also what happens when people don’t use the words they’ve got, they pervert perfectly decent and innocent other words).
And you won’t stretch your reader. Speaking as a reader, I love it when I have to go consult a dictionary. It doesn’t make me feel stupid. It makes me feel fond of the book; it makes me feel like the author trusts me.
Yes, you don’t want to use long or complex or unusual words just to make yourself look smart. But you don’t want to use simplistic or inappropriate words just because that’s the first one that occurred to you or just to make sure your readers don’t feel dumb. You want to use the right word, even if that does mean consulting resources like a thesaurus (for options) and dictionary (for nuances of meaning of the options if you’re uncertain).
This is the latest in semi-ongoing series about misapplied writing rules. The others are linked below:
Kill your darlings
Write what you know
Cut 10% in editing
Avoid adjectives and adverbs
Show, don’t tell
Just keep writing
Embrangle? They can’t get rid of embrangle, I love it!
You’re right of course. Half of the delight of reading is stretching to include new thoughts, and that includes new words as well.
Embrangle’s my favourite too and it might yet be saved; it won the online Times poll as readers’ favourite, followed by fubsy.
The list has been a boon for me: my current story features two related languages, Standard and Dialect – Dialect is a very close but regional version of the language (like Provencal is to French). I’ve been using a 1700s slang dictionary for words like mot, tib, feague, and prigg, but this gives me a few more unusual words to play with.
[...] is, by the way, why I feel the need to post the occasional Writing Rules, Misapplied entry: writing rules are useful for beginners, but not if they’re blindly applied without [...]
[...] | Tags: books, fiction, library, writing | The ‘Save the Last Word’ campaign, discussed previously here, has resulted in the some words being rescued from the Collins Dictionary cut, as reported by [...]
[...] entries about misapplied writing rules: Don’t consult your thesaurus Kill your darlings Write what you know Cut 10% in editing Avoid adjectives and adverbs Show, [...]
[...] exploring when good writing rules go bad. Previous entries are here: Adjectives and adverbs II. Don’t consult your thesaurus Kill your darlings Write what you know Cut 10% in editing Avoid adjectives and adverbs Show, [...]
Nice post. wendypalmer.com.au deserves an oscar.