Bigwords bug people

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When I was a kid, I used big words all the time. As you might have already guessed, adults loved it, and the kids hated it. I could never figure out why. Eventually, I learned that "using big words is something you just don't do around people your age". Although I still don't know the logic behind it, I follow that "rule", knowing it helps me socially.

However, using big words is considered somewhat OK among the people I work with, in the IT department. Since IT is all about techical terms, which are considered big words by most people, that attitude kind of carried over into social conversations.

I went through a phase in middle school where I tried to talk with as many big words as I could so that people would think I was a genius.

Sometimes I would get stuck mid-sentence, and then pretend to cough so they wouldn't notice.

I often get stick from mates for my use of vocabularly my pointless throwing in of "big" words into a conversation its not an intentional attempt by me to sound smart its just the way I speak and out of my control

I've known a lot of intelligent people who didn't have much formal education.

Check out some really good poetry, stuff that's been around for awhile, and see how often they use words hardly anybody understands.

"Never use a twenty dollar word when there's a twenty-five-center ready at hand."

E.B. White, The Elements of Style

TEll anyone that tells you to "eschew obfuscation" to "eh, shoo yo fuss, kay?"

Seriously, people that dont like big words want other people to have minds smaller than their own.

I think I was definately hyperlexic when I was young. I could read at "university level" by age 7 or 8, I believe. I have dyscalculia though, is that related? I was non-verbal until about age 3.5, afterwhich I began rapidly using and learning language, as well as learning how to read. I was diagnosed with autism around this time.

I was originally in an upper middle class family with two working parents. They DID bring work home, etc... I listened to TV, and DID get books. Some of the books WERE written for teenagers. Not advanced, but they WERE advanced for someone under 4 years old. My parents had family and freinds over who would talk well into the night. They WERE very eclectic. My mother also took me everywhere when she was shopping. BORING! I later read books on science, mechanics, and electronics. I guess MOST of my early vocabulary was based on that. I DID have this habit, and I WISH I kept it up. SOMETIMES I still do it. I would look up words, even ones I KNEW, and research certain words that came up. When I looked up brain chemistry, and heart problems, and certain medical terminology I did this.

I recently went to a sears autocenter. like HALF the stuff in the store dealt with POWER! In Electric terminology, power is WATTS! WATTS=VOLTS*AMPS! Yet one of the senior guys there didn't know that! WOW! I still remember when I wanted to work at Builders emporium. Before I even THOUGHT about doing so, I researched things like correlations in penneys!

I DID learn a lot of words that way. I went to private school. I don't think I learned many new words in class, though they DID teach vocabulary. I later went to pubic school, and don't think I lerned any words there either. I DID go to a private highschool for a time that had a crazy teacher that DID teach some vocabulary I didn't know. That WAS written for someone like 4 grade levels higher though.

I CAN tell you I didn't have that many books written at a very high level(though there were a few), and NONE of the people were very rich, etc...

Frankly, the biggest thing holding down the poor from a language standpoint, at least in the US, is the poor themselves. I DID at various points frequent the library. I meant to go today, but got sidetracked. Also, I AM Trying to get back all the fluency I once had in some languages. Maybe I can find some people near me that speak Spanish, German, Danish, French, and Hindi. Ironically, I used to be SURROUNDED by spanish speakers. I never bothered to keep up on spanish, out of a kind of pride. I guess I can go a few miles to an ahmish settlement, for German. Do you think they can tolerate someone that respects them but doesn't go to church, and REEKS of technology?

Anyway, my point is that most of the big word avoidance is due to misplaced hubris, and that leads to avoidance of use which exacerbates the problem.

BTW My mother said I was speaking full 100% intelligible sentences with relatively big words by 2. She seemed to indicate I just started speaking one day. I checked it out. Most kids start babbling at 3 months, and don't really speak sentences until about 1.5 to 2 years. They are simple, and 50% intelligible.

Steve

Hale bopp,

Every post I have seen so far that has "big" words in it has used them sparingly. I doubt that could be considered pedantic. Even though I have generally "sanitized" my speech, I sometimes let a word through that people don't know. Like ATOMIC! That SOUNDS obvious, like atomic bomb, but I used it in its most basic meaning of atomic process. I ended up having to make documentation incorrect, because the definition of that word in this case could have taken several pages!(no joke)!

I COULD say "a set of instructions that runs within one timeslice allocated to the related components. Timeslice is a unit of time the cpu gives to a process. etc..."

I checked dictionary.com, and they don't provide the proper definition, but they DO point to the jargon file. It says:

For the record, 'big' isn't limited to use in regards to size;