# Big Words?



## William Peter Grasso (May 1, 2011)

I'm currently reading Winston Churchill's _The Gathering Storm_ on my Kindle, in which he expounds on the years leading up to WW2. Man, let me tell you...Winston can sure throw around some big words! The latest brain-teaser: _limitrophe_. 

I don't believe I've ever heard or read that word in my life, and I'm well into my seventh decade. My Kindle onboard dictionary didn't recognize it, so I had to look elsewhere. It means: _a country or region on or near a frontier._

That story brought to mind a comment I once read by someone frustrated with Barbara Cartland's choice of words, citing her use of _"she asseverated"_ in place of the more common, _"she affirmed."_

I think the biggest word I ever threw into one of my novels was _microcosm._ It was used in dialogue, where one character was attempting to lord superior knowledge over another (the attempt was rebutted most efficiently).

What authors have driven you to the dictionary? How did you feel about having to do so?

WPG


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## 13500 (Apr 22, 2010)

I'm a word nerd, so I love expanding my vocabulary.


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## Groggy1 (Jun 21, 2010)

When I was a kid, Edgar Rice Burroughs... Otherwise, being driven to a dictionary is a good thing.

Try this one for a different view on evolution...

Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (FT Press Science) [Kindle Edition]


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I don't know why it works with some authors and not with others, but it seems that with some I can run into obscure words that work, and with others it just smells like they used a thesaurus to find something different. Maybe it's something about their style of writing that makes me believe one author actually knows the words s/he used and chose them as the best way to express what needed expressing, while another is just trying to show off or create some sort of variety.

For all I know, such perceptions of mine are wrong -- but I don't mind new words nearly as much in the former case whereas the apparent Thesaurus-using showoff will bother me.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I think some people just know more words -- and use them naturally.

And some people don't.  So when they re-read for proofing and realize they used the same word 4 times in 3 paragraphs so they go to the thesaurus.  

Sometimes, though, the synonyms don't really have the same effect -- even if they have the same meaning.


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## rejrej1 (Nov 4, 2012)

I love expanding my vocabulary ... but if you can't pronounce it!!!! I prefer to listen to a new 'long' word and how it sounds in a sentence. I often think of how prose sounds reading aloud, even poetic if the words are right. A big long ungainly word may look educational in a sentence, but if doesn't have a good ring to it, I'm not sure it is worth all the effort!


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

rejrej1 said:


> I love expanding my vocabulary ... but if you can't pronounce it!!!! I prefer to listen to a new 'long' word and how it sounds in a sentence. I often think of how prose sounds reading aloud, even poetic if the words are right. A big long ungainly word may look educational in a sentence, but if doesn't have a good ring to it, I'm not sure it is worth all the effort!


Interesting point, as I'm one of those people who hears every word in his head as he reads, while I understand some people normally don't (probably also why my reading speed is not very fast). It often affects me when reading fantasy/sci-fi where the author makes up weird names with weirder spellings that I then have to figure out how to pronounce every time I see it in the text.


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## PaulLev (Nov 2, 2012)

I give kudos, plaudits, and accolades to any author who uses a word I haven't seen before.


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## Fantasma (Aug 25, 2012)

PaulLev said:


> I give kudos, plaudits, and accolades to any author who uses a word I haven't seen before.


Exactly. I love it when I learn a new word.

Then I sometimes get enamored of the new word & use it all the time. The last one was "coruscate." I was putting necklaces in all my stories just so I could say they coruscated.


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## PaulLev (Nov 2, 2012)

Nothing like a really scintillating coruscation


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

Relatively recently I read the first of Gene Wolfe's The Book of The New Sun series purely because I heard it was full of big/obscure words and I wanted to expand my vocabulary.  It was, but they were almost all archaic medieval terms and it was a massive chore to get through.  However, I think Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy was perhaps the "wordiest" series I ever read.  It was brilliantly descriptive and involving, but I had to reach for a dictionary at least once on every page.  It was hard going.


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## Leanne King (Oct 2, 2012)

David Mitchell. He's well known as a wordsmith and his last book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, really put the built in dictionary through its paces. Great book by the way.


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## William Peter Grasso (May 1, 2011)

headofwords said:


> Relatively recently I read the first of Gene Wolfe's The Book of The New Sun series purely because I heard it was full of big/obscure words and I wanted to expand my vocabulary. It was, but they were almost all archaic medieval terms and it was a massive chore to get through. However, I think Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy was perhaps the "wordiest" series I ever read. It was brilliantly descriptive and involving, but I had to reach for a dictionary at least once on every page. It was hard going.


Hard going, indeed...

I'm all for using words that don't slow the story down or pull the reader out of it--and too many trips to the dictionary will definitely pull me out.

WPG


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## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

NogDog said:


> I don't know why it works with some authors and not with others, but it seems that with some I can run into obscure words that work, and with others it just smells like they used a thesaurus to find something different. Maybe it's something about their style of writing that makes me believe one author actually knows the words s/he used and chose them as the best way to express what needed expressing, while another is just trying to show off or create some sort of variety.


I know exactly what you mean. There's a difference between using an obscure word because it's the perfect word for the situation and just swallowing a thesaurus and then regurgitating it.

The dictionary function is one of my most-loved features of the Kindle. I love words and I love to know the origin of words so I use the dictionary often. I am reading a paperback right now, for the first time in maybe 100 books and I actually find myself reaching up to touch the page to get to the dictionary.


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## SteveScaffardi (Sep 6, 2011)

Irvine Welsh - but for slightly different reasons! Not because he writes with 'big' words, but because he writes in Scottish dialect which had me having to read and re-read one of his novels (the name escapes me now...) until the point where I just gave up!


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## Natasha Holme (May 26, 2012)

Years ago I always read with a pencil and made a mark in the margin everywhere I came across a word I didn't know. Once I'd finished the book, I would both look every word up, and record the meaning of it in a Microsoft Word document.


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## Kathelm (Sep 27, 2010)

I always enjoy the opportunity to learn a new word. I appreciate them when they're used to maximize precision, not when the goal is to obfuscate, intimidate, or impress. Here's a good reference for the really obscure ones:

http://www.amazon.com/Endangered-Words-Collection-Rare-Lovers/dp/1602397120

I picked up "curglaff" (the sensation accompanying sudden entry into cold water) from that book. Awesome word.


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## brianjanuary (Oct 18, 2011)

I love discovering words I haven't seen before. I wish authors would use then more!


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## M. P. Rey (Nov 3, 2012)

well... when the style is too flowery, with too many unusual words, I tend to disconnect from the story...


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## tahliaN (Nov 6, 2011)

I don't remember who it was or even what the word was now (it was so obscure) but it pulled me right out of the story, especially because it was a YA book. When I looked up what it meant, I thought, why use that when a simple word would have done just as well without cutting the flow of the story? I can't imagine what teen readers would have thought. At least the kindle dictionary makes it easy to look up, but I see no point in using big obscure words unless a more simple one really won't do.

At the same time, I like my vocab being increased. I'd never heard the word recalcitrant until the then Australian PM Paul Keating used it about Malaysia. Now I love that word, but it has a flavour all of its own, wayward just doesn't have the same ring to it.


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## NancyHerkness (Aug 1, 2012)

Sometimes a fancy word is the right word for a certain sentence/situation/emotion/description.  I'm fine with authors using unusual vocabulary, especially since I love words so much myself.

What I'm NOT fine with are the authors who use a word incorrectly, especially if they don't structure the sentence around it in the way the word demands.  I once read the first five pages (couldn't stand any more) of a novel where it appeared the author had written the pages, then picked up a thesaurus and substituted larger words for smaller ones without changing the sentences they were embedded in.  It drove me insane and I actually threw the book across the room.


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## Seleya (Feb 25, 2011)

I like precise words used correctly in context and hate when a self-styled writer has either a dumbed-down, limited vocabulary or an overblown 'look what cool words I know' one.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

Karen Wojcik Berner said:


> I'm a word nerd, so I love expanding my vocabulary.


What Karen said. I don't often see a word I'm unfamiliar with but when I do, can usually figure out the general meaning from the context of the sentence.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

This seems appropriate:


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## Lensman (Aug 28, 2012)

Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant was notorious for utilising an extraordinary vocabulary. Apparently everything he used was real, but many were so obscure that the full Oxford English dictionary was essential.

I don't mind an author using a more extensive vocab so long as it's clear in context what the word means, and it doesn't slow the flow of the page. Much of my knowledge of English came from working out what words meant as I read.


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## lvhiggins (Aug 1, 2012)

Michael Chabon, one of my favorite authors and one of the few who manages to be literary and commercial at the same time. He gives you words you can chew on, but not so often that it's annoying. Here's my favorite so far:


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## Robert B. Marks (Nov 15, 2012)

Beware James Joyce...

I had to read part of Ulysses for a university assignment - and vocabulary wise, everything I've seen suggests that Finnigan's Wake is completely incomprehensible...


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## danteexplorer (Nov 15, 2012)

I would have to put Umberto Eco in the big word pantheon.  He knows what they mean too!  Brilliant author.


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

That picture with words to say what space cars do was great!


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

I've heard it said that Churchill was basically soused around the clock, even while Prime Minister during the war, and yet still managed to pen prose better than most other authors dream of.

BTW, the third volume of William Manchester's colossal biography has been completed and published posthumously, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965. I listened to the first volume as an unabridged audio and may be the finest biography I've ever read. Volumes Two and Three and moving to my queue for 2013. A combined pages 1848 or 80:58 hours audio.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Geemont said:


> I've heard it said that Churchill was basically soused around the clock, even while Prime Minister during the war, and yet still managed to pen prose better than most other authors dream of.


He wasn't _permanently_ drunk, just often drunk. He was a manic-depressive too, which didn't exactly help with the first problem. Terrific writer, though, and one of the greatest orators of all time.


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## thebookcoverdesigner (Nov 16, 2012)

John Banville is excellent for obscure words. Or is it just me who has to look up words like 'flocculent'?


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## Kathelm (Sep 27, 2010)

> Beware James Joyce...
> 
> I had to read part of Ulysses for a university assignment - and vocabulary wise, everything I've seen suggests that Finnigan's Wake is completely incomprehensible...


Well, incomprehensible because you're using a lot of obscure words is one thing. Incomprehensible because you're not quite writing in any known language is another.


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## Tom S. Figueiredo (Sep 1, 2011)

"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." Things get really funny when an usual word sounds obscure.


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## William Peter Grasso (May 1, 2011)

Geemont said:


> I've heard it said that Churchill was basically soused around the clock, even while Prime Minister during the war, and yet still managed to pen prose better than most other authors dream of.





Tony Richards said:


> He wasn't _permanently_ drunk, just often drunk. He was a manic-depressive too, which didn't exactly help with the first problem. Terrific writer, though, and one of the greatest orators of all time.


Soused or not, the man could sure throw words around, that's for sure. The most unusual thing I find about Churchill is his self-professed nocturnal tendencies--working through the night and sleeping until noon. I'd be really curious to see how that worked out when he was Prime Minister, or even as a cabinet minister or MP. Did he make accommodations to the clock the rest of the his nation ran on? Or did it accommodate him? (I don't remember what Manchester had to say about that...)

WPG


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## Carrie Rubin (Nov 19, 2012)

I'm reading "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" right now, and between the Japanese names and words, the historical words, and the slang from past centuries, I'm encountering all sorts of unknowns.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Obfuscating and alacrity are fine, and an author should never write down to his/her readers. But to use a deeply obscure word when there are better known ones available strikes me as a bit show-offy, and poor technique as well, because it brings the story to a grinding halt while the reader goes and looks it up.

Norman Mailer once said (paraphrasing Miles Davis), "It's not only what you put into your writing that counts, it's what you decide to leave out." And unnecessary obscurity certainly falls into the latter camp in my view.


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## brianjanuary (Oct 18, 2011)

I started out as a Latin/Classical Greek scholar, so I love big words. They're fun! But I do keep them out of my novels (for the mosat part, anyway!).


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

I can't remember his name, but one of the Star Trek novelists. Every.single.page of a book I have to look up a word for the meaning. It drives me up the wall because he describes things like a round doorway as a giant iris...and then will continue the eye analogs through the entire book and getting more and more obscure as it goes.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

If you're a writer, then someone will always floor you somewhere along the line, T.L.. At a family gathering last Xmas, one of my wife's cousins (nice guy, but he does not read books at all) asked me: "You don't play video games? Then where do you get the ideas for your stories?"

Wow! I could only stare at him, speechless and gobsmacked (no, don't go looking that up ... its English slang for 'astonished' or 'dumbfounded').


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## William Peter Grasso (May 1, 2011)

Tony Richards said:


> If you're a writer, then someone will always floor you somewhere along the line, T.L.. At a family gathering last Xmas, one of my wife's cousins (nice guy, but he does not read books at all) asked me: "You don't play video games? Then where do you get the ideas for your stories?"
> 
> Wow! I could only stare at him, speechless and gobsmacked (no, don't go looking that up ... its English slang for 'astonished' or 'dumbfounded').


No video games, Tony? How can you possibly write stories? 

Reminds me of a comment a family friend once made over dinner. After I revealed the plot of the novel I was writing at the time, she said, with great conviction and enthusiasm (and not a hint of sarcasm), "You know, you should write a cookbook."
I, too, was gobsmacked...and left wondering why I had bothered to discuss writing in the first place. 
WPG


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

I was reading "A Princess of Mars" and I was surprised to read descriptions of lights "depending from the ceiling". The reason that was jarring was that normally, objects don't depend, events depend. Of course, it's a 100 year old book, usage seems to have changed somewhat. I just looked up depend in the Merriam-Webster, and the meaning that Burroughs used is #4. Perhaps that definition was more common a century ago. It wasn't that I didn't understand Burroughs' usage, it was just something I wasn't used to.

I'm reading The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant now, and he throws the thesaurus at you. I'm reading the book in paper so I don't have access to the Kindle's dictionary, but I've gotten used to it. I can generally skip over the obscure or outdated word and understand the sentence. He does love the word percipience: perception would have worked just as well, but that's the style he's going for. I guess percipience sounded more arcane or mystic.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Yup, 'depending' used to mean 'hanging.' It's where 'pendant' and 'pendulum' come from, amongst others.


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## Steverino (Jan 5, 2011)

Buckley taught me a lot of words, and had the decency to be funny as hell while he did it. I learned _encephalophonic_ and _ecdysiast_ from him, among many others.



Encephalophonic is still not in the dictionary, even though it's been decades. It does seem to be a band now, though.


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