I was given a copy of Chambers Dictionary[0] by my sister for my 18th birthday, I still have it. According to wiki, it is "widely used by British crossword solvers and setters, and by Scrabble players[..] It contains many more dialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions".
Wow! That's certainly a good one. A couple old favorites of mine are:
mullet – a hairstyle that is short at the front, long at the back, and ridiculous all around, and
regift – to give (an unwanted present) as a gift to another person, in a process which is likely to continue almost indefinitely.
You'd go to an encyclopedia to find out the history, origins, detailed variations, regional specialities and so on about the topic of éclairs not to understand what an éclair itself is. A dictionary should perfectly well describe a thing without needing to pull out an encyclopedia and if you look at a updated/modern version of the Chambers Dictionary you'll get just such a definition: "A long cake of choux pastry with a cream filling and chocolate or coffee icing."
‘Hal, you are here because I am a professional conversationalist, and your father has made an appointment with me, for you, to converse.’
‘MYURP. Excuse me.’
Tap tap tap tap.
‘SHULGSPAHHH.’
Tap tap tap tap.
‘You’re a professional conversationalist?’
‘I am, yes, as I believe I just stated, a professional conversationalist.’
‘Don’t start looking at your watch, as if I’m taking up valuable time of yours. If Himself made the appointment and paid for it the time’s supposed to be mine, right? Not yours. And then but what’s that supposed to mean, “professional conversationalist”? A conversationalist is just one who converses much. You actually charge a fee to converse much?’
‘A conversationalist is also one who, I’m sure you’ll recall, “excels in conversation.” ’
‘That’s Webster’s Seventh. That’s not the O.E.D.’
Tap tap.
‘I’m an O.E.D. man, Doctor. If that’s what you are. Are you a doctor? Do you have a doctorate? Most people like to put their diplomas up, I notice, if they have credentials. And Webster’s Seventh isn’t even up-to-date. Webster’s Eighth amends to “one who converses with much enthusiasm.” ’
I couldn't disagree more with this piece, especially the idea of a "draft #4" where you go through what you've written and replace all "pedestrian" words with less common ones from the dictionary.
I know these writers, and how they "write" - it's painful to read and oozes pretentiousness. You can always tell when someone tries to fake having a wider vocabulary.
It's not about using less common words. It's about finding variants that better capture the essence what you're trying to say, or add life to the prose.
> He explains that for him, draft #4 is the draft after the painstaking labor of creation is done, when all that’s left is to punch up the language, to replace shopworn words and phrases with stuff that sings.
None of that suggests the writer is looking to use obscure words. I know the writers you're talking about as well; they're just doing it badly, or mimicking what they think a good writer does.
Compare:
Todd opened the curtains and the room got brighter
with:
Todd parted the curtains and sunlight streamed into the room
Both describe the same thing, and both use ordinary words. But the second one paints a better image in your mind. Of the curtains revealing the window behind them, of the way the room gained illumination, etc. It's livelier.
Or, let's say your marketing team proposes a new slogan: "Our intention is to make sure you're satisfied". A good writer takes a crack at it and comes up with "We aim to please".
First one sounds corporate and boring, the second one is friendly and informal. But both use words that everyday people would understand.
If you've just finished a draft of a few thousand words, a lot of dull phrasing will have made it into the writing. While writing those drafts you were focused on the narrative or plot or whatever. Draft #4 is when you comb through it and look for crusty phrases, replacing them with "stuff that sings". It needn't be garrulous ;)
The issue is authors who spend to much time with a thesaurus rarely actually understand the words their choosing. It’s the difference between an artist painting using charcoal and a child using markers. The second is more colorful, yet crude.
Further writing is about the goal, describing a hallucination using stilted language for example can actually make things more vivid. Todd opened the curtains and the room got brighter. Was the room illuminated by the sun, moon, streetlights, or did the walls suddenly glow? We don’t know as things have been abstracted to show effects rather than a clear causal chain. The important bit is to be making stylistic choices not simply imitating competence and hoping nobody noticed the difference.
The whole point of published writing is to put enough effort into one-to-many communication to be clear, concise, and expressive. Finding the right words (not the fanciest or rarest words) helps writing to better transmit intention from author to reader.
Careful revision and editing should be celebrated as expressing appreciation for readers, not sneered at as inauthentic.
facile | ˈfasʌɪl, ˈfasɪl |
adjective
1 ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial: facile generalizations.
• (of a person) having a superficial or simplistic knowledge or approach: a man of facile and shallow intellect.
2 (especially of success in sport) easily achieved; effortless: a facile seven-lengths victory.
I guess someone needs a better dictionary (this was sourced from Dictionary.app on MacOS, btw...)
> facile | ˈfasʌɪl, ˈfasɪl | adjective 1 ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial: facile generalizations. • (of a person) having a superficial or simplistic knowledge or approach: a man of facile and shallow intellect. 2 (especially of success in sport) easily achieved; effortless: a facile seven-lengths victory.
>
> I guess someone needs a better dictionary (this was sourced from Dictionary.app on MacOS, btw...)
I think you are reinforcing the authors point. That definition most certainly does not present a mental image of prose in which the best word is 'facile'. Instead it makes me think that 'facile' is almost indistinguishable from 'ignorant'.
Compare that definition to the one from Websters 1913-1928 definition:
Fac"ile (?) a. [L. facilis, prop., capable of being done or made, hence, facile, easy, fr. facere to make, do: cf. F. facile. Srr Fact, and cf. Faculty.] 1. Easy to be done or performed: not difficult; performable or attainable with little labor.
*Order . . . will render the work facile and delightful.*
Evelyn.
2. Easy to be surmounted or removed; easily conquerable; readily mastered.
*The facile gates of hell too slightly barred.*
Milton.
3. Easy of access or converse; mild; courteous; not haughty, austere, or distant; affable; complaisant.
*I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet.*
B. Jonson.
4. Easily persuaded to good or bad; yielding; ductile to a fault; pliant; flexible.
*Since Adam, and his facile consort Eve,
Lost Paradise, deceived by me.*
Milton.
*This is treating Burns like a child, a person of so facile a disposition as not to be trusted without a keeper on the king's highway.*
Prof. Wilson.
5. Ready; quick; expert; as, he is facile in expedients; he wields a facile pen.
Which definition more accurately represents the word as it is used in prose? 'Facile' and 'delightful' go together quite well. 'Ignorant' and 'delightful' do not.
I am not concerned … with offering any facile solution for so complex a problem.
—T. S. Eliot
Miss Adebayo visited and said something about grief, something nice-sounding and facile: Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.
—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
“Joker” takes off from a facile premise and descends into incoherent political trolling as a result of scattershot plotting and antics—its director, Todd Phillips, appears not to see what he’s doing.
—The New York Times
Unless you read a lot into definition 4 of Webster's, the app dictionary, or even the word 'shallow,' gives a result much more accurate to how I've seen the word actually used. With more than a century and a half since the dictionary was first published, seems like plenty of time for a shift in meaning to happen.
It's interesting how the modern usage hasn't crossed over into it's noun form, "facility," which, though essentially the same word, has overtones of competence rather than laziness or ignorance.
(Or maybe no one uses that word, and it's sense hasn't changed bc I only read it in books?)
Yes, but they're not just from the same root, they're different forms of the same word. Ones the noun, ones the verb. They have exactly the same meaning (except for their grammatical function) but the connotations are almost opposite.
I don’t know much about Latin grammar, but from what I can tell both facultas (whence faculty) and facilitas (whence facility) were standard noun forms of the Latin word facilis. Both of these nouns come to English from Latin via French, and neither was newly generated in English.
In Latin (and thence English) facultas meant ability, while facilitas meant easiness.
The adjective facilis comes from the verb facio (to make or do; from the same PIE root as the English verb 'do'), and meant something that can be done/made; something easy, ready, or quick; or someone friendly, courteous, or compliant.
Sorry, just saw this. You're absolutely right about the etymology, but generally the suffix "-ity" in English serves to make an abstract noun out of an adjective. So it seems more likely to me that "facility" is derived from the English "facile" than developing alongside it.
All that said, its just speculation, and facultas->facility/facilitas->facile would explain the subtle difference in meaning.
Those quotes give a much better sense of the word's current usage than either dictionary definition, I think. Myself, I find this usage of "facile" grating, preferring Webster's definition, but that's because I spend a lot of time reading Spanish, French, and books from before 01900; Eliot's quote can be plausibly interpreted either way, perhaps showing how the shift began.
Indeed, this demonstrates that words are note code - their meaning changes with use over time, unlike software.
We can certainly compare definitions and arrive at our own conclusions about the effectiveness of communication their usage imbues - but an omitted definition? We cannot argue over words that are not defined, whether by omission in literature (dictionaries) or by virtue of the reader being, to put it blunt, simply too lazy to check another dictionary ..
It obviously has a shared history with the Spanish word (comes from Latin. The negative connotation in the phrase "facile piece of writing" would be "over-easy", as in: "over-simplified". ("Too easy" doesn't quite have the right connotation.)
When used derogatorily it also carries an implication that something is 'pretending to be easy' while not actually being so. It might also tie in with Facsimile, but that might be a false etymology on my part. Which I guess ties this back to pretentiousness, but not quite in the way you meant to :).
Thinking ambiguity can be removed if you only use common words is misguided. You will get writing that is bland and lacks nuance and you may limit the palette of what you can convey, but even then without a fixed exhaustive definition for every word there is ambiguity in shades of meaning.
For example, what exactly does “common” mean above? “bland”? (writing is not a food, is it?) what precisely does it mean for writing to have “nuance”? and so on.
It depends on overall style, but I generally enjoy writing that thoughtfully sprinkles around less common or even invented (DFW) words. It keeps me on my toes—human memory is not perfect, if I haven’t had to consult the dictionary in a while then my vocabulary must be degrading.
> Thinking ambiguity can be removed if you only use common words is misguided.
Overall, based on all of the comments in this subthread, it seems that “facile” is most often meant simply mean “shallow”… don’t use a fancy word where a simple one will suffice.
Of course there isn’t an equivalency: at the very least the choice of words in the face of synonyms is meant to signal something beyond what the word and sentence itself is supposed to communicate, like “I sound intelligent”.
Just because you didn’t expect to encounter a word, why would you assume the author dwelled on the choice and consulted thesaurus specifically to impress you, and it didn’t come as the most appropriate word for the occasion like your choice would to you?
I'll just toss into the fray the OED entry for Facile:
facile, a.
(ˈfæsaɪl, -ɪl)
Forms: 5–6 facyl(l)e, 6–8 facil(l, 5– facile.
[a. Fr. facile, ad. L. facil-is easy to do; also of persons, easy of access, courteous, easy to deal with, pliant, f. facĕre to do.]
1.1 That can be accomplished with little effort; = easy 11. Now with somewhat disparaging sense. †Formerly used as predicate with inf. phrase as subject, and in phrase facile and easy.
1483 Caxton Æsop 97 It is facyle to scape out of the handes of the blynd. 1538 Starkey England i. iv. 133 As the one ys ful of hardnes and dyffyculty‥so the other ys facyle and esy. 1577 Holinshed Scot. Chron. I. 449/1 They‥thought it easie and facile to be concluded. 1641 Prynne Antip. Epist. 4, I gathered with no facil labour, the most of those Materials. 1676 Worlidge Cyder (1691) 236 The more facile making of the linnen manufacture. a 1703 Beveridge Serm. xci. Wks. 1729 II. 126 All other acts of piety will be facile and easy to him. 1856 Froude Hist. Eng. I. 357 Having won, as he supposed, his facile victory. 1876 C. M. Davies Unorth. Lond. 250 The work appears facile.
2.2 Of a course of action, a method: Presenting few difficulties.
1559 W. Cuningham Cosmogr. Glasse 109 The waye is very facile, and without great laboure. 1607 Topsell Four-f. Beasts (1673) 152 Yet have they found out this facile and ready course. 1639 Fuller Holy War iii. ii. (1647) 112 His Holinesse hath a facile and cheap way both to gratifie and engage ambitious spirits. a 1718 Penn Tracts Wks. 1726 I. 703 It will render the Magistrates Province more facil. 1807 Vancouver Agric. Devon (1813) 463 Baiting‥in the manner performed on the continent, is an infinitely more economical and facile mode of administering refreshment to a jaded animal. 1860 Tyndall Glac. ii. ix. 271 The facile modes of measurement which we now employ.
†b.2.b Easy to understand or to make use of. Obs.
1531 Elyot Gov. i. v, As touchynge grammere there is at this day better introductions and more facile, than euer before were made. 1579 Digges Stratiot. ii. vii. 47 We have by the former Rules produced this playne and facile Aequation. 1633 Sc. Acts Chas. I, c. 34 The short and facile grammer. 1644 Milton Educ. 100 Those poets which are now counted most hard, will be both facil and pleasant. 1676 Worlidge Cyder (1691) 103 To make this curious Machine more useful and facile. 1786 T. Woolston Let. in Fenning Yng. Algebraists' Comp. (1787) p. v, It having been long considered as a most facile Introduction to Algebra. 1797 A. M. Bennett Beggar Girl (1813) II. 24 The harp and the piano-forte were equally facile to Rosa.
3.3 Moving without effort, unconstrained; flowing, running, or working freely; fluent, ready.
1605 B. Jonson Volpone iii. ii, This author‥has so modern and facile a vein Fitting the time and catching the court⁓ear. 1657 Austen Fruit Trees ii. 204 One man excells‥in a facile and ready expression. 1796 Ld. Sheffield in Ld. Auckland's Corr. (1862) III. 371 Your‥happy facile expression in writing. 1820 L. Hunt Indicator No. 31 (1822) I. 246 On the facile wings of our sympathy. 1865 Swinburne Atalanta 1641 Deaths‥with facile feet avenged. 1873 Symonds Grk. Poets v. 144 Stesichorus was one of those facile and abundant natures who excel in many branches of art. 1886 Stubbs Med. & Mod. Hist. iii. 57 To the facile pen of an Oxford man we owe the production of the most popular manual of our history.
4.4 Of persons, dispositions, speech, etc.: †a.4.a Easy of access or converse, affable, courteous (obs.). b.4.b Characterized by ease of behaviour.
c 1590 Greene Fr. Bacon i. iii, Facile and debonair in all his deeds. 1638 Featly Transubt. 219 A young Gentleman of a facile and affable disposition. 1782 F. Burney Diary 12 Aug., My father is all himself—gay, facile, and sweet. 1844 Disraeli Coningsby iii. v, Manners, though facile, sufficiently finished. 1876 Holland Sev. Oaks x. 134 He was positive, facile, amiable.
c.4.c Not harsh or severe, gentle, lenient, mild. Const. to; also to with inf.
1541 Elyot Image Gov. 88 Your proper nature is mylde, facile, gentyll, and wytty. 1631 Weever Anc. Fun. Mon. 116 She was of a more facile and better inclined disposition. 1655 Fuller Ch. Hist. v. v. §7 Q. Elizabeth‥A Princesse most facil to forgive injuries. 1670 Milton Hist. Eng. Wks. 1738 II. 80 However he were facil to his Son, and seditious Nobles‥yet his Queen he treated not the less honourably. 1851 Sir F. Palgrave Norm. & Eng. I. 297 The guilty sons were too happy to avail themselves of his facile tenderness.
5.5 Easily led or wrought upon; flexible, pliant; compliant, yielding.
1511 Colet Serm. Conf. & Ref. in Phenix (1708) II. 8 Those canons‥that do learn you‥not to be too facile in admitting into holy orders. 1556 Lauder Tractate 251 Be nocht ouir facill for to trow Quhill that ȝe try the mater throw. c 1610 Sir J. Melvil Mem. (1683) 103 Facil Princes‥promote them [Flatterers] above faithful Friends. 1648 J. Beaumont Psyche xvii. cxcvii, Alas, That facil Hearts should to themselves be foes. 1671 Milton P.R. i. 51 Adam and his facil consort Eve Lost Paradise. 1805 Foster Ess. ii. vi. 192 The tame security of facile friendly coincidence.
b.5.b in Scots Law. ‘Possessing that softness of disposition that he is liable to be easily wrought upon by others’ (Jam.).
1887 Grierson Dickson's Tract. Evidence §35 Proof that the granter of a deed was naturally weak and facile‥has been held to reflect the burden of proving that [etc.].
1667 Milton P.L. iv. 967 Henceforth not to scorne The facil gates of hell too slightly barrd.
†6.6 quasi-adv. Easily; without difficulty. Obs.
c 1523 Wolsey in Fiddes Life ii. (1726) 114 His countries, whose parts non of the Lords or Commons would soe facile inclyne unto. 1548 Hall Chron. (1809) 316 Whatsoever were purposed to hym they‥might easely se and facile heare the same. 1560 Rolland Crt. Venus ii. 80 The Muses‥mair facill ȝour mater will consaif, Fra time that thay heir ȝour enarratiue.
The goal is not to replace common words with less common ones, but imprecise words with more precise ones, especially those with connotations and implications that more closely fit the surrounding writing.
There's a place for plain, utilitarian writing, but your complaint is a bit like saying Vermeer is a pretentious wanker because he paid more attention to colour and symbolism than the illustrator who did the images for my microwave's instruction manual.
> I know these writers, and how they "write" - it's painful to read and oozes pretentiousness.
Are you thinking, perhaps, of Mark Twain? I've never heard anyone say he was "painful to read" or "oozes pretentiousness"; you could be the first. Yet it was Twain who wrote, "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning," which is what this "draft #4" business is all about. (He stole the phrasing from a friend of his, but the sentiment was his own, in a letter in 01888 to George Bainton: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/09/02/lightning/)
Absolutely, and that is often the point of rummaging through the dictionary. On another occasion Twain put it more... eloquently? Here he does ooze pretentiousness:
> In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency... Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity.
McPhee's essay Somers was commenting on warns against the same danger:
> In the search for words, thesauruses are useful things, but they don't talk about the words they list. They are also dangerous. They can lead you to choose a polysyllabic and fuzzy word when a simple and clear one is better. The value of a thesaurus is not to make a writer seem to have a vast vocabulary of recondite words.
So clearly McPhee was not advocating the unnecessary use of hundred-dollar words [correcting for inflation since Twain's time].
I have to mention the elephant in the room - how you, kragen, habitually write e.g. "01888" when "1888" will do — you "choose a polysyllabic and fuzzy word when a simple and clear one is better".
Regardless of what it's for, writing 5 digit years is the kind of choice that makes your writing "ooze pretentiousness" just like choosing to use hundred dollar words last seen a century ago.
Nah. It's a little conceit. It's a small dash of eccentricity to add spice to an unusual point. It invites one to ask the question, "why do you habitually use 5 digit years?"
You, on the other hand, are veering directly into ad-hom and that's not nice. We can talk about how we like to use language without calling out other peoples' language choices.
I venture to aver, you pusillanimous chop-logic, that upon undertaking to investigate the situation in greater profundity, you would in all likelihood discover that you are taking the entire thing entirely too seriously!
Sure, I have zero doubt that McPhee is a goldmine of good writing advice. I don't know who Somers is and it feels to me like the heart of TFA is basically a hack to make your writing seem more "literary".
Somers, too, implicitly criticizes "using fancy language where fancy language isn’t called for"—"fustian" isn't a compliment when used of prose. The adjectives paired with it in Wiktionary tell the story: "Dutch fustian", "wretched fustian", "mere fustian", "genteel fustian which lacks either poetic resonance or demotic realism".
But he doesn't really give any writing advice in his essay. He doesn't recommend that you write fustian or that you write like Hemingway or indeed that you write at all; instead, he recommends that you read the dictionary because it will be fun. So, if we're talking about writing advice, we need to look at McPhee's essay, not Somers's.
Giving words a cost is a great way of thinking about how to write. Make expensive words pay their way - they must add enough value to the writing to justify their "cost".
It was a common vernacular figure of speech in Twain's time and for decades afterwards. I haven't ever heard of a writer budgeting a dollar figure for each paragraph and adding up the cost of each sentence.
I think what I wrote sounded a bit literal. I don't think anyone really does that "full time" as it were. I was just parroting Mark Twain's phrase really. :-)
I am so glad to have read your comment. You took the words right out of my mouth. I was very confused by the phrase “diversion of the field” as both “diversion” and “field” can have so many diverse and incompatible meanings.
The author asks: “Who decided that the American public couldn’t handle ‘a soft and fitful luster’?”. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the correct answer to that question is “research”. Linguists and child psychologists have studied the effect of dictionary definitions on learning and realized that simpler definitions are more useful to school students than the author's dream of “stuff that sings”, and that a clear and succinct definition like “a quality that evokes pity or sadness” is more comprehensible, and hence more useful, than whatever Webster's blurb is trying to express.
It should be ironic that the author would use “fustian” as his prime example — a word which, prior to reading this article, I had never encountered before, but after seeing the paraphrasing, “It’s using fancy language where fancy language isn’t called for”, I now know exactly how to describe this piece.
The goal of the modern dictionary is quite different to the goal of Websters original dictionary.
The modern (english) dictionary aims to serve as a list of definitions and meanings of words for someone who requires a list of definitions of words. This means that the explanations and example usages have to be short and simple because the person using it may not have a full command of the language.
The original Websters dictionary, as far as I can tell, serves to document the language for existing native-language users. This lets it be more expressive in the words definition (because you can use more expressive language), with the expectation that the user of the dictionary already has some sort of mastery with the language.
Perhaps modern dictionaries' definitions are more accessible to someone with a child's grasp of English, as you say. However JSomers makes an excellent point, that Webster's definitions are more accurate, as well as being examples of great writing.
John McPhee isn't a pretentious writer at all, though, and I encourage you to try him out to test your theory. Getting rid of pedestrian words doesn't require you to replace them with ostentatious words, merely more vibrant, descriptive ones.
> I couldn't disagree more with this piece, especially the idea of a "draft #4" where you go through what you've written and replace all plain words with difficult ones. I know these writers, and how they "write" - it's painful to read, they want to make themselves seem better than they are. You can always tell when someone tries to pretend to know more words than they really do.
The whole point here is not to mindlessly replace words but to be able to find words that more accurately describe what you are trying to convey. The expanded definitions and examples are great starting points for digging deeper into both the language and the underlying motivation.
I understand it wasn't meant to be "mindlessly", I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth.
Still, if you don't have the more accurate word in your vocabulary, then don't use it. It will sound stilted and unnatural in the context of your sentence.
There’s an important subtlety here — you’re meant to be replacing the words that don’t sit right with you. Your starting point is that it’s already potentially stilted and unnatural and you’re trying to fix that.
Most importantly though — this is a tool, and not a replacement for taste and judgment. Seen from that perspective, it’s a much more potent tool than what a traditional dictionary offers.
"He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary to see if it is properly used"
-- William Faulkner, of Ernest Hemmingway
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
To quibble a bit, in American English, Webster's is the traditional dictionary. That's why most American English dictionaries have "Webster" in their name, even if, as Somers writes, their "contents bear no relation to Webster’s original." It's the leaden, imprecise form of definition Somers criticizes that is a break with Webster's tradition.
Hah, that is, perhaps, a perfect example of the article’s point!
“Conventional” might’ve been a better choice of word than “traditional”, or something else that better conveys the meaning of “in common usage today”, without the “in the olden days” baggage that comes with “traditional”
I get what you're saying, and agree. When I was in middle school I'd shamelessly use MS Word to replace words in my reports with fancy sounding synonyms that I had never heard of before. I kind of cringe at the memory. But on the other hand, that's also kind of how I got them to be in my vocabulary. I feel like once you commit to a new word in your own writing, you start seeing it everywhere and getting a feel for how it's naturally being used.
Exactly. This curmudgeonly proposal that ones vocabulary remain immutable is for the dags and curs whose life has not been rewarded by the virtues of newly discovered language.
Making up words is fun for the writer, but it often not fun for the reader. Like the popular perception of poetry. Few people have a deep knowledge of their own language or other languages, so their inventions come across as childish.
Your own usage of “dags” is frustrating because as a reader from Australasia, “dag” has a common meaning. Example usages: “You’re a dag”, “Fred Dagg”, “rattle your dags”, “clean up those daggy sheep”. And back on topic, the common meaning in Australasia is not mentioned in the online American Merriam-Webster dictionary!
There is a difference between active and passive vocabulary though. Just because you can't think of a word right now, doesn't mean that you and your readers wouldn't easily understand it.
> That being said, for anything that you want to be sure your readers understand, "write like you talk".
Most people's speech (excluding times where they have carefully written it in a manner different than unprepared speech) not only isn't colorful, it's unclear by words alone, though often helped by tonal, pacing, and, in person, nonverbal cues, and, in interactive contexts, interaction with active audience members, all of which are lost in text.
“Write like you talk” can be good advice for people who are dealing with a couple specific problems (either a form of analysis paralysis stopping them from getting anything written, or habitual overwriting) but otherwise it's just bad advice that ignores the radical differences in medium.
I don't think it's meant to be taken quite that literally. For me, it's about using vocabulary that you are comfortable with, phrases and rhythms that you use in everyday life. It's not an instruction to transcribe every sound that comes out of your mouth.
People get caught up in the gravity of writing. I've seen amazing pub storytellers churn out unreadable dross because they think they need to be "literary". It's true that there are differences in the mediums, but they're not as great as people make out. Unless it's High Art (in which case everything is up for interpretation), it's all just transferring information from my brain to yours with as little spillage as possible.
Writers "speak" to us most directly when we "hear" their "voice" as we read. And some of the most atrocious nonsense I have read is by people who claimed to have "found their voice". You don't need to look for it. You use it every day. Follow that and you will avoid writing ridiculous, ambiguous things like "diversion of the field" when you really mean "sport".
> You don't need to look for it. You use it every day.
This only goes for young kids in their native language.
In the other cases, it would just take too much time to get better at it, without that minimum of effort. (Which you might not be forced to do after high school.)
Not to mention that language is not just for communicating, but also for thinking.
That's the key difference between technical writing and literature:
Technical writing needs to be simple, to the point, short sentences, same word for the same concept, always.
Literature has a priviledge of poetic entertainment. It may indulge on linguistic expression and the readers will vote with their feet what they love and what they hate.
Poor writers use a dictionary in the way you describe. Using a dictionary does not make you a poor writer. I was satisfied with the example in the article that this wasn’t just a hack to purvey overly mellifluous verbiage.
> You can always tell when someone tries to fake having a wider vocabulary
Is it really 'fake' if they're actually using the words appropriately in whatever prose they are creating?
At what point do you address your own hubris when you encounter a word you don't use, or even understand, and rapidly make the conclusion that the writer is pretentious?
Surely the assessment of anothers pretentiousness happens after examining ones own hubris on the subject matter, or perhaps to put it another way - lack of the sophistication observed in others ... ?
Although I agree with the siblings, in that (done well) it should better convey the intended meaning, while also capturing the readers imagination with a little artistry - I know what you are getting at.
Sometimes I come across those articles, trying way too hard to add flourish to their writing, but they only achieve a veneer. It does not improve their communication and as you say, it's entirely pretentious. But these are not the same types of writing, one is genuine, the other mimicry.
> You can always tell when someone tries to fake having a wider vocabulary.
Doubt it. I know I've been accused of using a thesaurus when I was just compulsively and thoughtlessly posting stream of consciousness on social media.
I think people who think such things just have small vocabularies. They can't imagine others have any fluency with words they don't know.
> Light was regarded formerly as consisting of material particles, [...] but it is now generally understood to consist [...] in the propagation of vibrations or undulations in a subtile, elastic medium, or ether [...].
Feels like being taken to a different age. In fact the most apparent weakness of such a dictionary is that it doesn't reflect the changes in the language since it was written.
> Notice, too, how much less certain the Webster definition seems about itself, even though it’s more complete — as if to remind you that the word came first, that the word isn’t defined by its definition here
I like this. A dictionary with an opinion, rather than a definition.
I just read a book from 1854 covering a dry agricultural topic. To my suprise, the language was more poetic and rich than most modern prose! It was a delight to read and never felt contrived or difficult to follow. Extending our personal vocabulary can spice up a text ... just make sure it doesn't get too spicy.
Reminds me of Mark Forsyth's quip in his delightful book _The Elements of Eloquence_: "To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility"
There's a very high barrier to entry for slang terms when it comes to being added to mainstream dictionaries, which means I'm often left confused about the meaning of a word I've encountered, unable to find it in these dictionaries. If it weren't for Urban Dictionary I would never learn many of their meanings.
"A thought flashed through me, which I clothed in act"
I can read and understand phrases like these, because I can read the same language. But I can never create anything with the same ring, or richness of metaphor, when I compose my own. It saddens me greatly. I wonder how one gets the mind for it.
I don’t know of your habits, so this advice may not apply to you. But we are living through a slow-motion crisis in language, in the English-speaking world. It is caused by mostly everyone reading, routinely, constantly, and nearly exclusively, garbage prose. This description applies to nearly all journalism, technical discussion, essays of opinion, and any writing related to politics, computers, society, or technology. And we imitate what we read, even if not consciously. Eventually, we lose the ability to express ourselves well.
Spend some time every day reading Shakespeare, Joyce, or Nabokov. Maybe some PG Wodehouse or Oscar Wilde. After a year or so, it will start to seep in. You will notice your own writing becoming more beautiful, and more precise (which is largely the same thing.) I can guarantee this, because you care, and that’s 90% of what’s required.
Comments like these are what keep my attention here. Thanks very kindly for your encouragement. To learn from the greats, we ask from whom did they learn? It's an apt question. And you're right, I have had the desire this long, it is a cruelty to deny myself any longer.
The dictionaries the author starts with seem to be the concise dictionaries which are intended to be that way. I don't blame him since the full dictionaries (e.g. OED) are hidden behind paywalls but the full dictionaries are really, really good. The entry for "flash" in the OED for example contains literary examples of the kind the author seems to want, like "red the gaze that flashes desolation". The OED also includes several senses of the word and its etymology.
The OED costs $100/year for US residents or £100/year for everyone else [0] but you can often get access through a library. The San Francisco Public Library has a proxy you can use if you have a library card there [1].
Also I scanned the OED and put it on the Internet Archive so everyone can access it for free and build on it. The whole thing is in the public domain now, at least in the US, though of course not the second and third editions.
It took me about a month (thanks to the Archive for lending me the machinery!) but that was mostly because I kept getting distracted by reading the damned thing. If I'd had greater discipline, I would have missed out on a very pleasant month of evenings reading the OED and listening to the Crash Test Dummies, but I probably would have been able to finish in a week, and then I would have been much better prepared for moving out of my house and into a Volkswagen Vanagon.
One of my favourite possessions is the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, which is the full 20 volume OED microprinted into 2 large volumes. It comes in a case with a magnifying glass. It's too unwieldy for everyday use, but it's a pleasure to browse through it.
I’m happy to see this comment here. The OED is a wonderful resource and, as mentioned, can often be accessed via a library membership. I just need to enter my Dublin library card number and I get full, free access.
Another great writing resource is etymonline.com, which gives a bare definition along with a full etymology drawn from different sources.
This is a bit off topic, but why do I need a subscription to access a dictionary? How often should I be expecting the language to change? Not to mention that the UX got much worse since the 90s, when I had a program on my desktop to instantly look up words.
Language changes slowly but constantly: words evolve new sentences, new phrases are coined, others become less current. The OED is so big that the only practical way to revise it is continuously, a few entries at a time. Every quarter there are hundreds of changes: https://public.oed.com/updates/ . As with software, it turns out that financing a product that needs continuous updates is more effectively done with a subscription than by selling products as one-off transactions. (FWIW the print version of the 2nd edition OED is 20 volumes and is listed on the OED site at 860 quid.)
The OED is a historical dictionary that records over 1000 years of the language's development. It aims to be a complete dictionary of the English language from its origins to today. It frequently adds new entries and new examples of older words. I don't know that £100 per year is a reasonable price, but it's not an inexpensive endeavour to run; it employs many lexicographers.
Most people don't need the full OED and should probably just buy one of the smaller Oxford dictionaries. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is an excellent single-volume dictionary of modern English based on the Oxford Dictionary of English (which is not the same as the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is a historical dictionary, while the ODE is a dictionary of contemporary English).
If you're in the UK then many public libraries have subscriptions to the OED which include "remote access". This means you can log in from anywhere just by putting your library card number into the OED's login form. So check that before signing up for a hundred quid a year :-)
This is also true for many colleges & universities in the USA. If you have any university affiliation, check with your university library system first.
I look up 'ordinary' words like those (as opposed to those I don't know the meaning of beforehand) all the time, probably more than unknown words. But not for 'Draft #4' reasons, I look out of curiosity for etymology, older meanings, how common an alternative pronunciation might be, etc.
A very nice trend is that medical terms are named in a more descriptive way - "shoulder joint" is much easier to understand than some latin term or something named after a doctor/patient.
"Wilson's disease" is much harder to understand than "excess copper buildup disease"...
I've been reading Brene Brown's "Atlas of the Heart" - a book that tries to wrangle the definition of emotion words. It's a sort of dictionary crossed with Brene's own stories and her research. Really good read for those into language and psycholgy.
I like much of what the author is getting at. Not all dictionaries are not equivalent, and you can really see the difference when you start paying attention. But his prose is overwrought and distracting.
The best acting doesn't draw attention to itself as acting; you just see the character. The best music, in my view, doesn't draw attention to itself as music; you're just immersed in it. The best English prose doesn't draw attention to itself as writing; you're just immersed in a description of something, or a story about something, or an account of something. It's understated to the point of being easy to underestimate.
• arctic: Designating the celestial north pole, and the Pole Star that marks its position in the sky.
• sport: Diversion, entertainment, fun.
• magic: The use of ritual activities or observances which are intended to influence the course of events or to manipulate the natural world, usually involving the use of an occult or secret body of knowledge;
• example: A person's conduct, practice, etc., regarded as an object of imitation or as an influence on the behaviour of others
While not as expressive as Webster's, I was surprised by their color compared to the facsimiles given of other modern dictionaries.
It seems a pity for a definition of "arctic" not to mention the connection with bears. (Greek arktos means "bear". The Arctic is the north because the constellation called the Great Bear, or Ursa Major, is in the north, and one of its stars is pretty much right over the north pole.)
Just to give some idea of what a more comprehensive dictionary might offer, here's the definition of "sport" from the Chambers Dictionary (1991; I really must buy a newer edition...), one of the most thorough single-volume UK-English dictionaries, for "sport":
sport, v.i. to play (arch.): to frolic (also v.t. with it; arch.): to make merry: to practise field diversions: to trifle: to deviate from the normal. -- v.t. to amuse (obs.): to wear, use, exhibit, set up, publicly or ostentatiously: to wager: to squander (rare): to force open (obs). -- n. recreation: pastime: dalliance, amorous behaviour: play: a game, esp. one involving bodily exercise: mirth: jest: contemptuous mirth: a plaything (esp. fig.): a laughing-stock: field diversion: success or gratification in shooting, fishing, or the like: a sportsman: a person of sportsmanlike character, a good fellow: an animal or plant that varies singularly and spontaneously from the normal type: (in pl.) a meeting for races and the like.
Here's the Shorter Oxford (two volumes, a bit less concerned than Chambers with cramming in as many words and senses as possible, hence less terse; more concerned with showing the historical development of the language, hence things like M18 meaning "first found in the middle 18th century"):
1 a Diversion, entertainment, fun; an activity providing this, a pastime. LME. b Lovemaking, esp. sexual intercourse, viewed as a game. M16-L18. c A theatrical performance; a show, a play. Only in L16. 2 a A matter providing amusement or entertainment; a joke. arch. LME. b Jesting, joking; merriment. arch. L16. 3 a An activity involving physical exertion and skill, esp. one in which an individual competes against another or others to achieve the best performance. Later also, participation in such activities; such activities collectively. E16. b In pl. A meeting consisting of various athletic and occas. other sporting contests. See also sports day below. L16. c The recreation of hunting, shooting, or fishing. M17. 4 a A thing tossed about by natural forces as if a plaything. M17. b An object of amusement, diversion, jesting, etc.; a laughing-stock, a plaything. L17. 5 BIOLOGY. A plant (or part of a plant), animal, etc., which exhibits some abnormal or striking variation from the parent stock or type, esp. in form or colour; a spontaneous mutation; a new variety produced in this way. (Earliest in sport of nature below.) Cf SPORT verb 7b. M17. 6 a A gambler, a gamester. US. b A person who follows or participates in (a) sport; a sportsman or sportswoman. L19. c A toung man; a fellow. US. L19. d. A fair-minded, geneous person; a lively, sociable person. See also good sport below. colloq. L19. e Used as a familiar form of address, esp. between males. Chielfly Austral. & NZ. E20. 7 The sports section of a newspaper. Freq. in pl. (treated as sing.) colloq. E20. 8 In pl. (treated as sing.) A sports car; a sports model of a car. colloq. M20.
Followed by several citations illustrating the various meanings, and then a lengthy set of phrases such as "in sport", "the sport of kings", "sports bar". Those are all just for the noun; there is then a section of similar length for the use of "sport" as a verb.
The full OED's entry is much longer still, mostly because it provides many citations for each meaning, from the oldest its editors have been able to find up to (where possible) something like the present day. E.g., the OED's version of the hunting/shooting/fishing meaning (3c in the SOED) is "Success, pleasure, or recreation derived from or afforded by an activity, originally and esp. hunting, shooting, or fishing. Frequently with adjectives expressing the level of success." and it has 17 citations ranging from approx 1450 to 1998.
Sorry if I wasn't clear in my original post. This was just looking at the first definition of the words, much like the examples given in the article. As you noted, the full OED definition is much longer, and the bear connection is mentioned in the etymology section.
Those definitions are pretty but incomplete, right? It totally excludes the physical meaning of sport, and it forgets that an "example" doesn't need to come from a person
I loaded up the suggested Webster's 1913 dictionary on my ereader to test it out. I picked two random words on the current page of the book I'm reading. Neither "condolences" or "constraint" were in that dictionary. Quality of definitions doesn't help if you don't have the quantity because the dictionary is over 100 years old.
I also agree with other commenters regarding the OED.
I just checked the copy of Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) I loaded into a free app from the URL included in the article. "Condole", "condoled", "condolement", "condolence", "condoler", "condoling", "constrain", "constrainable", "constrained", "constrainedly", "constrainer", "constraining", "constraint", and "constraintive" are all present when searching for the root of both of those words. You can also search here:
This would suggest that we are not simply using the wrong dictionaries, but in fact, learning to deploy language inaptly from grade school onward. Students are examined on definitional understanding rather than the "hues" to which the author alludes. Command of language would necessarily include details of how one word is subtly different from another.
How should our system of teaching language be altered?
TL:DR: by expecting/allowing less, we offer less, and get less from our students.
The first place to stop would be to stop lowering our expectations of all children. The more the drive standards down to the lowest common denominator in order to pass the greatest number of students each year, the more the lower the bar that the brightest are given an opportunity to achieve. It also lowers the level of language students of all abilities are exposed to, and reduces what they can achieve. I strongly believe in remedial teaching as needed for diverse subjects, but the USA educational systems often target offerings to the lower end of the masses, and do a disservice to the academically gifted and academically challenged in the process. Read the writing of Mark Twain, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and other authors of what were considered children's (elementary school age) books 100-150 years ago. Notice the rich and colorful language in them. Notice that everyone thought that 8-9 year old children should be reading them. Then notice that while we have some exceptions in modern publishing, the general language standard has been simplified greatly on average in children's books. If you aren't exposed to colorful and complex writing, you'll never get better at understanding it.
In the past, many schools also employed more time with the teacher reading novels years above their grade level to children, then verbally discussing it in chunks. This prepares them for later reading them on their own and writing about what they've read, as verbal language comes more easily to most. If you read a chapter a day of the first Harry Potter book to a 5 year-old who really can't read it on their own yet, then talk about what happened in each chapter as you go, and ask them/allow them to describe why characters did certain things, you help increase their own language ability in both comprehension and expression.
Some public schools now frown on this, as they dogmatically stick to the official list of reading levels. Some teachers are simply too overwhelmed by the sheer number of students they must deal with, the other social needs of students they must deal with, and the rest of the modern mess.
Some years ago this same article came up on HN. I remember downloading a special app to run Webster’s 1913 version on my iOS device.
I also remember being very jealous of macOS users for having a dedicated dictionary.app. Now I happen to have a Mac myself so guess what daddy is going to do this evening? Indeed, get himself an upgrade .
Linguee is also great because it gives many examples of words in the context where they are used. (Context which isn't necessarily high quality though.)
And of course if you want to go deeper into a word, Wikipedia usually has its etymology... though I guess that for English that old Webster might be better ?
I've found Wiktionary to be far more objective than other dictionaries about its etymology. If there are multiple competing theories, it will say as much, instead of simply presenting one chosen possibility without qualifying it.
This is the essence of why anime is better in Japanese than with subs/dubs - not only is the wording much better than a straight translation but the voice acting is much more passionate in turn.
It's becoming annoying to watch any netflix animes because the subtitles focus on the official translations instead of what's being said. After 15 years of watching anime, I can understand several expressions and sentence structures, and English translations are really lacking. English is a good international language because it's simple, not because it's subtle, and it shows.
"English is a good international language because it's simple, not because it's subtle, and it shows."
I can't let that pass :-)
English as an international language is not the entirety of English. The English language is enormously subtle - but people rarely (these days) learn it to the required level. Ironically, (in my view) its adoption as an international tongue is one cause of this. People learn it to a functional level, to get on in business and life, and that's the job done.
Sadly this reduced, simplified English will likely become what English is (this is already happening) . A bit of a poisoned chalice, becoming the international language.
Ok, just looked it up - and I see the phrase was coined by a Frenchman from the Grand Ecole. From the article - Nerriere describes Globish as a device that will 'limit the influence of the English language dramatically'.
The thing about translations is that they’re not written by the author. You can translate something and convey the same approximate meaning, but it will always be an approximation, sometimes reduced, of the original intent of the writing.
Sometimes you just can’t translate feelings well, even if an apparent direct translation exists. Swear words are a glaring example. You can translate motherf* either word for word or with a similar swear word, but it either won’t feel native or it won’t have the same connotation.
English itself is fine. I recently read “The Gradual Extinction of Softness” [1] and I was unable to translate it into my language and maintain the same feeling.
That said I think any translation even with a great deal of love and care can’t really express things the same way just due to cultural/innate differences in languages. Def don’t agree that English is somehow less capable of expression than Japanese, but just that any translation is an approximation, and usually it’s a half hearted one.
I think it's "diversion" in the (unusual) sense of "an enjoyable activity", and "field" in the sense of "an open outdoor area with grass or crops". Which is a kid of ... poetic? ... definition of a "sport" (e.g. football, a leisure activity you do on a grassy square).
A diversion is an activity done for fun or enjoyment, rather than for money or similar. A sports field is the area in which the sport is carried out, and has the connotation of “outside” from its other meaning as a meadow.
A definition of “sport” as “an activity undertaken for enjoyment, in a specific environment, commonly outside” is pretty decent in my view.
I think in this context "the field" means in the sense similar to "the field of study", i.e. the encompassing boundaries of an endeavour. So in this case long distance canoeing is an off the beaten track distraction from the sport of canoeing (or in the contrapositive, an off the beaten track distraction from long distance travel). The phrase is enticing because it could be interpreted either way; and still have largely the same meaning.
In this sense any diversion would have a "field" so saying "diversion of the field" would be redundant. As a definition of sport, it is much more likely that "field" means the outdoors (there probably were not many indoor sports at that time).
However, this shows why this dictionary is not actually good for modern, practical use, IMO.
I've always loved its definition of "éclair":
> "a cake, long in shape but short in duration"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambers_Dictionary