Writing about the past I have to continually remind myself that people had much bigger vocabularies. They spoke in long, full sentences. My great aunt would never have said “You know” or “like” or described something as “that thing”. They rarely used contractions. I will, not I’ll. I cannot, not I can’t. They read extensively and they used all those words when they spoke. I suppose they had more time. Their lives weren’t as rushed.
I have always considered that I am an educated person and I have a good vocabulary. However I’ve noticed it shrinking recently. Where did I put that thing? John asks. What thing? You know, that thing we brought back from thewhatsit store. We’ll be down to caveman grunts soon!
So….I have recently subscribed to something called Word Genius. It gives me a new word of the day and I’m embarrassed to say that so far I have known none of them!
Here are some from the past few days:
Esurient. Do you know what it means? Ten points if you do. It means hungry.
Lambent. It means glowing softly.
Otiose. It means useless, pointless.
Gibbous. It means convex, bulgy. A gibbous moon.
Sobriquet… this I was familiar with but don’t think I had ever used it in conversation. It means a familiar form of ones name or a nickname. Lady Georgiana’s sobriquet is Georgie and her brother’s is Binky.
(Actually after the first week I have known most of them so I'm not quite as hopeless as I thought)
I have been surprised throughout my life that I have come across new words to me and have had to add them to my vocabulary. I didn’t know what Nemesis was until I read Agatha Christie.
I knew about zenith but didn’t realize its opposite was a nadir.
Juggernaut was outside my vocabulary until large trucks in England were referred to by that name.
And an ombudsman? What the heck was that when I first read of it in the newspaper. But where on earth did it come from?
Then there are words that I’m always confused about because they sound like the opposite of what they really mean:
Bucolic. Doesn’t that sound like something nasty? A disease? And yet it means an idyllic country setting, doesn’t it?
Sanguine: another word that sounds nasty. Something to do with a vampire!
So DEAR REDS do you have large vocabularies? Are you often coming across words you don’t know? And did you know the meaning of those words I shared from Word Genius?
JENN McKINLAY: Well, I thought my vocabulary was pretty good. I knew lambent and sobriquet, but otiose? That's a new one and I love it. So thank you for sharing that, Rhys! I'll try not to wear it out. My mother was a librarian so we were a wordy house. You could never just get a definition out of the woman. It was always a big production to go to the dictionary and look stuff up. Small wonder I became a librarian, too. Back when the NYT Book Review was a weighty insert worth an entire Sunday afternoon, I used to write down any words used in the articles that I didn't know. By the end of the year, I had quite the vocab list. And now I must be off to go sign up for Word Genius!
LUCY BURDETTE: We have the same conversation over and over Rhys. Do you know where that thing is? one of us asks. Use your nouns, John will often say. (Can you see me sticking my tongue out?) My theory is that we have so much stuffed into our heads by now that it takes a while for the brain to grind through and find the right word. But even so I'm going to check out Word Genius too...
HALLIE EPHRON: I frequently trip over unknown words in The New Yorker and in The New York Times. The Times has printed lists of their most frequently looked-up words. One year, the #1 most looked up word: panegyric. #2: immiscible. I don't know what either one means. Most of the rest of the words on their list I know: churlish, risible, anathema... The word I most often think means the opposite of what it does: nonplussed. Also ingenuous.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Agrarian sounds like it shouldn't mean that, right? I think it should mean angry all the time. Riparian, too. It should be someone in the Rotary Club. I knew most of those Rhys, but I don't use them. (Except for sanguine, which I use all the time, weirdly.) They're like, available words, but I hardly take them out of the cabinet. Knowing them and using them are so different! And when a word sticks out, is that ..a good thing? Noisome is a frustrating one--and enervate. They should just change the meanings. I found an old notebook I had from collage and I had kept a vocabulary list for myself. One of the exotic words was "ecology." Ah, times do change.
And the noun-loss disease? Seriously, I am so worried about it that I actively try to avoid it.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys! I am now hooked on Word Genius! I played Daily Word until I got to one that completely stumped me--Resfeber! I did guess the correct answer, but it was only through process of elimination. Resfeber is the feeling of excitement before a trip or journey. Who knew? It's a Swedish word, because there is no English word that quite encapsulates the feeling. (There, I used a big word without thinking!) Seriously, English is such a rich and complex language. But I fear our collective vocabulary is shrinking every day. But I don't want to lose mine, and am constantly looking up words when I'm reading books or the newspapers. Shamefully, however, I have to admit that I seldom use a paper dictionary these days--it's so much easier to just type a word into the online one.
HANK: Even easier..I just yelled: 'Hey Alexa, what does immiscible mean?" And she said: "immiscible means the incapability of two things being mixed together." Whoa.
RHYS: Alexa knows everything! Scary.
So now it's your turn. Do you find your vocabulary is shrinking? Do you find some words that are confusingly different from their meanings?
