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Show )'-m ; f Just Stuff jsf i? , by Jnn r y xfflr The other day in one of my classes the professor was talking about vocabularies. He made the comment that the only way to gain a good vocabulary is to read, and one of the books he suggested reading was the dictionary. It sounds almost as exciting as burying yourself in a text book or encyclopedia. When Mr. Webster, or Funk and Wagnal published their lexical guides I don't think they were expecting them to be read in the excitement one would pursue a Harlequin romance. I'm not about to read an entire dictionary, but I did flip through a few pages and I found that there are certainly some great words in existence that don't get used much, at least they're not part of my everyday phraseology. Of course there are also some words, like francium, which is a radioactive element isolated from some other big word, or ketone which is an organic compound of something, that only a physicist or scientist would have in his vocabulary. Frangible is a good word. It means easily broken or brittle. It's not quite fragile, but a little better than breakable. If you want to conduct something in closed or secret session, you don't have to say "closed or secret session," just say "incamera." Vermiform means like a worm. Ignominous, which means marked by involving dishonor or disgreace, or something which is disgraceful, sort of rolls off the tongue in a neat way as does sanguine, meaning of cheerful, hopeful disposition. A teacher once told me he could tell freshman papers. They used all the great big words, even when a little word would work. They spent entire evenings rewriting their papers with the constant use of a Thesaurus. "If a little word is good, a big word will work wonders . . ." Words don't have to be big to be good. Often times long, unfamiliar, words merely bog a reader down, if not out and out confuse him. "A mass of concentrated earthly material perennially rotating on its axis will not accumulate an accretion of bryophytic vegetation" is simply "A rolling stone gathers no moss." One should not dissipate their competence by hebetudinous prodisality lest they subsequently lament an exigous inadequacy. In other words, "waste not, want not." And, one of my favorites: "If you continue to insinuate that I prevaricate, I'll be forced to horizontalize your perpendicularity." In other words, "If you keep calling me a liar, I'm going to knock you flat!" Big words, small words, there're tons of them out there, that we don't even know exist. I've always prided myself on having a good vocabulary; I could score pretty high on the "Word Power" game in "Reader's Digest," but I have yet to even scratch the surface. Not that a wide vocabulary or use of the English language is important, but I think I'll curl up in front of the fire for a few nights with Mr. Webster! |